-Title: Real challenge is changing mindsets
-Writers: Halimah Yacob(Madam) and Bob Tan, Co-Chairmen, Tripartite Alliance for Fair Employment Practices
-Date: Jan 29, 2010
-URL: http://www.straitstimes.com/STForum/Story/STIStory_483576.html
Comment by Brandy:
I REFER to Ms. Halimah Yacob and Mr. Bob Tan’s letter this Friday, ‘Real challenge is changing mindsets’. In the letter, they mentioned that some jobs have special language requirements. This, to some extent, may course discrimination. Hence, they suggested that the employers should explain the reasons of the language requirements clearly to avoid the negative effect on the employees. However, the most important point they are concerning about is changing the mindsets and avoiding discrimination in the real work instead of written advertisements. Although people are trying hard to change it, there is still unfairness among employees. They think people should still work on this and focus on the capability instead of race of an employee.
I strongly agree with the writers. Race and language should not be considered as criteria of the jobs, expect some special cases as language education. We cannot deny that certain races might achieve a lot in certain fields, so people tend to hire certain races for certain jobs, such like Indians are good at Electronic area. However, I think, this also cannot be a criterion. People can get certain skills is not because they are certain races. It is because what they learnt and how they were trained. Like Chinese can also speak good English, other races which do not seem to be good at an area may also have elites. Hence, it is really unfair to have such requirements. However, language is still important. Employees must have the ability to communicate with each other, so English, the global language, should be required. But it will be unreasonable, if you want a casher who must be able to speak mandarin.
It is true that many companies had already changed their criteria, but how can they insure they will not tent to select employees of certain races? As the writers said, it is important to change our mind and treat every race equal. Capability is the thing employers should look for.
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Brandy
ReplyDeleteYour response gives a clear start and provides a summary of the article/letter referred to. In an actual forum letter/article, this could be briefly introduced and attention could be given more to the writer's stand and your stand.
While I may not fully agree with your views (since they too contain some forms of stereotyping), I think your views reflect what most people might feel. You could substantiate further with actual examples or other evidences.
Generally, your response is fairly good, but with improved language structure and expressions, your future responses could be much better.
I agree with you that race cannot be a criterion for selection and everyone should be treated equally. However, I may not agree with you on some of your views.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, I think it is reasonable for the owner of Duty Free Shop to employ people who can speak good Mandarin. Singapore is famous of its booming tourism. Nowadays, an increasing number of Chinese people choose Singapore as their destination of journey. In such a paradise for shopping, DFS will be the most popular place for Chinese tourists to shop due to the convenient location in the airport and the cheaper price compared with other places. Therefore, for an employee in a DFS, to speak good Mandarin is necessary, which will be very helpful when he or she serves the customers. Although English is a global language as you said, the shop service should also meet the demand of these potential customers from China.
Moreover, I am wondering how people came up with the discussion of races on basis of the requirement of DFS. Language is a skill that everyone can have through hardworking. The owner just said that they wanted good Mandarin speakers for the job, and did not mention the race. Every time some policies or some cases related to races came out, there were always some people who stood out and advocated “equality”. In my view, a person, who tented to discover and exaggerate any tiny difference between races, probably has a wrong value of “race equality”. Hence, I agree with the title to some extent: the real challenge is changing mindsets, not the employers’ in this case, but the over-sensitive mindsets of those people who made this simple requirement complicated.
Crystal