Singapore Strike: The Full Story

By Chun Han Wong

This story of a strike by Chinese bus drivers in Singapore offers a close-up look at a major issue facing the Southeast Asian city-state today: The growing number of migrant workers who underpin Singapore’s economy and the social tensions that their presence can generate. 

What happened over two days in late November 2012 rattled the foundations of Singapore’s economic success – its business-friendly governance and industrial harmony – and prompted a robust response from the government.

The strike, a rarity in Singapore, resonated across Asia, where other countries are grappling with a growing dependence on foreign labor, too. And it provided a window into ordinary lives seldom-seen: the migrants who fan out from China in search of a fatter paycheck abroad.

How to balance the need for new workers from overseas with the preservation of established ways, presents a major dilemma that policymakers and citizens will wrestle with for years to come.

Chapter One: Contours of Conflict

SINGAPORE—In the cool hours before dawn one Monday in November, this metropolis was at its calmest, its sleek skyscrapers and tree-lined thoroughfares drained of their daytime bustle.

Most of Singapore’s 5.3 million residents were still asleep. But there were signs of life at a cluster of austere housing blocks in the city-state’s northern suburbs, in a district called Woodlands. It was 3 a.m.

In cramped dormitories, Chinese bus drivers donned maroon shirts and black pants – the uniforms of employees of SMRT Corp., a state-owned public-transport operator.

Then the drivers gathered in clusters near the dormitory gates. Shuttle buses waited to ferry them to bus terminals dotting the island, part of the dreary pre-dawn drill that ensures Singapore’s commuters arrive punctually at work every day.

As the buses idled, the drivers chatted in their native Mandarin. But that morning, the talk was different from their usual early-morning banter.

AFP/Getty Images

He Junling said he came across an online advertisement that was part of the SMRT hiring drive in early 2011. He is pictured here on Feb. 25.

He Junling, a 32-year-old mainland Chinese driver, and others walked through the group, spreading the message that the drivers should refuse to work that day and the next, according to Mr. He and others.

Slimly built with short cropped black hair, Mr. He has a calm, unassuming demeanor. But after one-and-a-half years at SMRT, his sense of grievance had reached boiling point.

The day before, in an essay addressed to his Chinese co-workers published on an online forum, he had laid out his case for why the drivers should not go to work. Compared with drivers from Singapore and neighboring Malaysia, drivers from the Chinese mainland felt they were being discriminated against by the transport company.

“We’re all human, yet SMRT management treats us so differently,” Mr. He wrote, using an alias that was known to his Chinese colleagues. “Clearly, they think there’s so many mainland Chinese available that they could hire hundreds at a go and fire anyone who steps out of line.”

That morning, as he worked the crowd, Mr. He reinforced his message with an appeal to the drivers’ patriotism and sense of injustice, tapping what the drivers say is a reservoir of frustration accumulated over several years over issues such as pay and living conditions.

A total of 171 Chinese drivers – the majority of them from the Woodlands-district dormitory – complied with his plan. It called for drivers to take medical leave en masse to miss work, according to SMRT public statements and prosecutors’ documents later filed in court in a related case. The shuttle buses departed empty.

Soon company supervisors showed up to try to persuade the men to work. They refused to budge and demanded to see the chief executive, according to the drivers.

Officials at SMRT, which serves 25% of Singapore’s bus ridership, declined to comment on the essay written by Mr. He. They would later acknowledge certain shortcomings and take steps to address them. But they say the company didn’t discriminate against its mainland Chinese drivers and called the workers’ actions inappropriate.

The Chinese drivers’ act of defiance would have been insignificant almost anywhere else. But in Singapore, a labor protest is a high-stakes game.

For this tightly controlled city-state, famous for its ban even on the sale of chewing gum, the drivers’ actions threatened one of its most cherished assets: A long record of maintaining unflinching public order and efficiency.

Over the past 50 years, that reputation has been a magnet for companies and investors across the globe, turning Singapore into one of the world’s richest places – a manicured island of skyscrapers, eight-lane highways, luxury cars and fancy restaurants.

The bus drivers, too, had plenty on the line. Each had spent a small fortune and traveled thousands of miles for a chance to make a better living. Many were the sole breadwinners in their families. In Singapore, they became unlikely activists, but not ineffective ones.

The dramatic events they set in motion would cause upheaval at one of Singapore’s most prominent companies, leading it to review and revise its practices, and prompt intense public scrutiny of the country’s way of dealing with employment disputes.

The strike would also spur some changes that may make life better for the migrants who come in the future. Yet, for some of the drivers who refused to board the buses that November morning, those changes would come at a high price.

Singapore hadn’t seen anything like it in years.

***

The grievances felt by Mr. He and other Chinese bus drivers in Singapore are part of a broader drama unfolding in Southeast Asia’s financial capital.

Like many other rich nations, Singapore has come to count on imported labor from China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines and elsewhere to fuel its economic growth. Many of those imported workers do jobs that increasingly-affluent Singaporeans aren’t tempted by: Bus drivers, construction workers, hospitality staff, among others.

Foreign workers numbered 1.27 million as of December 2012, about one third of the labor force, up from 652,700, or about 28% of the total workforce, in 2002. This immigration surge boosted Singapore’s population by nearly 32% since 2000 and helped its economy grow at an average annual rate of about 6% in the past decade, but also contributed to rising living costs and stagnating low-end wages.

Singapore’s Gini coefficient—a measure of income inequality in which zero indicates that all income is shared equally and one represents complete concentration of income—rose to 0.478 last year from 0.442 in 2000, making it the second-most unequal economy in the developed world, behind Hong Kong.

“We face difficult choices: We need foreign workers to serve our economy and Singaporeans’ needs, and immigrants to make up for our shortfall of babies,” Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in a televised speech on Aug. 8, the eve of Singapore’s National Day. “But we also worry about crowding and congestion, and maintaining our Singaporean identity.”

Foreign workers join a working environment where public dissent is muted and labor protest is virtually unheard of. Since it came to power in 1959, the People’s Action Party has enforced strict controls on public assembly, curbed union powers and rewritten labor laws to favor employers. Unions at the time were decimated; those that survived were mostly subsumed under the National Trades Union Congress, a confederation that is often led by a cabinet minister.

Under Singapore law, a union can only strike after obtaining consent from a majority of members through a secret ballot. Foreign workers on fixed-term contracts aren’t permitted to become full union members.

A strike can be deemed illegal, according to the law, if its participants pursue causes beyond a specific trade dispute, and if the action “is designed or calculated to coerce the Government either directly or by inflicting hardship on the community.”

Workers performing “essential services”– including health care, firefighting and public transport – must give 14 days’ notice before going on strike. Employees of public utilities including water and electricity services have no right to strike at all.

The result is what the PAP government calls “constructive and dynamic” industrial relations managed under a “tripartism” model linking workers, employers and the state, according to the website of Singapore’s Manpower Ministry, which regulates labor issues and workplace conditions.

Singapore’s last legal strike occurred in 1986 when workers at U.S. oilfield-equipment company Hydril picketed their factory for two days to protest the dismissal of several union leaders. Government officials had approved the strike in advance.

Authorities have since shown little patience for industrial action. In 2002 and 2003, when disputes between Singapore Airlines and its pilots’ union threatened to boil over, top government leaders—including Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding prime minister—weighed in with threats of punitive action, so as to head off full-fledged industrial action.

“We are telling them, both management and unions, ‘you play this game, there are going to be broken heads,’” Mr. Lee, then Senior Minister in Singapore’s cabinet, said in a December 2003 speech during one of the disputes.

“If we sit back and do nothing and allow this to escalate and test the wills, then it is going to lose hundreds of millions of dollars in one, two, three months of nastiness,” Mr. Lee said then. “We are not going to have that.”

***

Reuters

A police van departed the dorms in Woodlands district on Nov. 26, 2012.

Even though Singapore is tiny compared to China – a population of just over five million versus 1.3 billion – the island state is enticing to thousands of Chinese workers. It is safe and orderly. Wages for basic jobs are higher. And it comes with a degree of familiarity: The majority of Singaporeans are ethnic Chinese, whose ancestors started arriving in large numbers in the 1830s.

SMRT has been hiring bus drivers from China since late 2007 to help staff its fleet of more than 1,050 buses. Foreigners accounted for about 44% of SMRT’s 2,000 bus drivers as of the end of last year. Half of those – about 450 – were from China, according to SMRT. The other half were from Malaysia. Typically, the company uses recruitment agencies to find and transport workers from China to Singapore.

Mr. He, the driver who wrote the essay calling for drivers not to work, was recruited this way. He said he came across an online advertisement that was part of the SMRT hiring drive in early 2011. He was living in his backwater hometown of Qinyang, a city of 400,000 in China’s central Henan province.

He said he paid 25,000 yuan (US$4,080) to recruitment agents in China and passed a battery of driving tests before SMRT hired him. The job meant separation from his family for at least two years. But he figured the promised payoff would make up for it.

According to Mr. He, recruitment agents promised prospective drivers monthly wages of about 2,000 Singapore dollars (US$1,560) after overtime, or up to 10,000 yuan. That was more than double his salary as a truck and bus driver in China.

The terms of employment would become a central factor in the drivers’ dispute. Mr. He and others said that their recruiters had made inflated promises about their wages and working conditions in Singapore.

SMRT declined to comment specifically on Mr. He’s account, but told The Wall Street Journal it has reported the alleged misrepresentation by China-based agents to Singaporean and Chinese authorities for further investigation. Efforts to determine the identity of the agents and contact them were unsuccessful.

“I wanted to provide more for my family, especially for my child,” now five years old, Mr. He said in a telephone interview. “It was also a chance for me to gain fresh experiences, seeing and learning new things.”

But Singapore also would hold some unpleasant surprises.

***
Chapter Two: Simmering Feud

For the hundreds of Chinese bus drivers who migrated to Singapore in recent years to take up jobs at local transport companies, adjusting to the new surroundings was often harder than they expected. Many soon felt they were being viewed with the resentment that has been growing against the influx of foreigners in recent years.

Many Singaporeans say foreigners take jobs, push up property prices and add new strains to the infrastructure, especially its crowded subways. There is also a deep cultural divide between Chinese migrants and the local Chinese community, which comprised 74% of the resident population as of 2012.

Some Singaporean Chinese, themselves at least third- or fourth-generation immigrants from China, label recently arrived mainlanders as country bumpkins for their perceived social idiosyncrasies and weak grasp of English, Singapore’s lingua franca.

“We often felt discriminated against,” He Junling, one of the Chinese bus drivers, recalled in an interview. “Many of us had unpleasant encounters with ethnic Chinese Singaporeans, who looked down upon us mainlanders.”

To be sure, the problem isn’t unique to Singapore. As thousands of Chinese nationals stream overseas each year to find work, many have met with hostile reception from wary hosts.

Some 871,000 Chinese nationals were working abroad as of June, according to China’s Commerce Ministry. Many go to Southeast Asia, particularly places like Vietnam and Myanmar, where anti-mainlander sentiment has swelled in recent years into fiery public rhetoric and even mass protests.

In Singapore, where public assembly is tightly regulated, many citizens express their anger online, applying epithets like “PRC scum” and “foreign trash” to mainland migrants and asking them to return to China.

But their increasingly strident and xenophobic tones have worried the government, political analysts say. The government in the last three years has tried to assuage Singaporeans by handing them more social benefits compared to noncitizens, and slowing inflows of migrant labor. Prime Minister Lee last year urged citizens to be more tolerant of foreigners.

In any case, few of the Chinese bus drivers in Singapore interacted with locals outside of work, preferring to socialize within their small, close-knit cliques.

After working 10- to 12-hour shifts, six days a week for SMRT Corp., a state-owned Singapore transport company, they spent most of their free time relaxing in dormitories tucked away in Singapore’s industrial districts.

Facilities in the dormitories were basic, shared between hundreds, even thousands, of migrant workers of various nationalities and industries.

Click to review the major players in this story.

Rooms usually housed eight people. Workers slept on double-decked bunks laid with thin mattresses and straw mats, drivers recalled.

Some invested in cheap television sets and laptops for entertainment. Many busied themselves calling family and chatting with co-workers over beer and cigarettes.

Occasionally, they treated themselves to a day out at a local park or mall. With most of their pay spent on remittances, debt and daily necessities, they could afford little else.

Drivers said they frequently complained to supervisors about what they described as the cramped and unhygienic conditions. As roommates often plied different shifts, they disrupted others’ sleep cycles, leaving them perpetually lethargic. Illness spread quickly in the crowded spaces, drivers say.

In that environment, drivers say, resentment simmered over their pay and other terms of the job.

***

Before July 2012, SMRT paid mainland Chinese drivers – all hired on two-year deals – basic monthly wages of S$1,000 (US$780), compared to about S$1,200 a month (US$940) of basic pay for Singaporean and Malaysian drivers, who were permanent staff, according to SMRT statements.

Total compensation was more complicated, with Chinese drivers also receiving accommodation and utility-bill subsidies worth about S$275 a month, though they also received lower bonuses than the Singaporean and Malaysian workers, according to the SMRT statements.

Mr. He and several other mainland Chinese drivers say recruitment agencies hired by SMRT never made it clear to them that they would be paid lower base salaries than other drivers. SMRT said it has reported the alleged misrepresentation by agents to the relevant authorities. Efforts to identify and contact agents were unsuccessful.

To the Chinese drivers, the different salary programs seemed unfair. They say they understood why Singaporeans – as citizens working in their own country – received better terms, but questioned why SMRT seemed to favor Malaysians over Chinese nationals.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong

There are deep social and economic ties between Singapore and Malaysia, which facilitate cross-border employment between the two former British colonies. Singapore was part of Malaysia from 1963 to 1965, and in the years since, many Singaporean employers have taken to hiring Malaysians, who typically speak English and assimilate easily given the cultural similarities.

About 400,000 Malaysians work in Singapore and many take up permanent residency in the city, a status that carries perks including participation in a state-backed pension program. SMRT has not commented on its hiring preferences but told The Wall Street Journal in an emailed response to questions that its remuneration packages—including benefits—for mainland Chinese and Malaysian drivers are “equitable.”

All this meant little to the Chinese drivers, who felt SMRT should treat all foreign staff equally.

The drivers, however, said they were reluctant to complain too much and risk their livelihoods. Many said they had taken hefty loans to pay fees to recruitment agents to secure their jobs.

They say they also were afraid of retaliation based on the experience of Hu Xiuwen, one of the first Chinese drivers to make the trip. The story of what he said he encountered circulated widely among the drivers who followed.

Mr. Hu, a Qingdao native, joined SMRT in January 2008, he said in a telephone interview. He said SMRT took possession of his passport once he landed, and placed him in an overcrowded state-built apartment with six other drivers.

Mr. Hu said he did well at work, winning trust from supervisors, who would assign him additional shifts – an important income supplement. He said he was even picked to be a poster boy for SMRT’s recruitment drives in China.

The company eventually moved him and a co-worker to another apartment, he said.

But that apartment was also overcrowded, he said: A three-room affair that they shared with eight other people – two other foreign workers, the landlord and his family, and a housekeeper.

Hu Xiuwen

Worse still, Mr. Hu said, his room was infested with bedbugs, making it hard to sleep.

Mr. Hu said he sought help from a human-resources supervisor, but was rebuffed. According to Mr. Hu, the supervisor became agitated at the mere mention of the complaint and accused Mr. Hu of acting rudely.

The landlord and supervisor couldn’t be reached for comment.

Days later, Mr. Hu was summoned to SMRT headquarters and dismissed without any explanation, he said. The same day, he said, a repatriation company put him on a plane back to China.

SMRT hired Mr. Hu in January 2008 but dismissed him in September that year for unspecified “disciplinary reasons,” the company said in response to queries from The Wall Street Journal. It declined to comment on his allegations.

***

The fates of others who complained seemed to offer confirmation that dissent would not be tolerated, drivers said.

In 2010, SMRT’s early cohorts of mainland Chinese drivers were completing their two-year contracts. Some left the company then. Others penned a petition, in Chinese, and collected about 185 signatures.

In the document, they accused SMRT of providing them with poor lodging conditions that weren’t conducive for sufficient rest and left them lethargic, according to a copy of the petition reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The drivers also in the petition demanded the company to return their passports, taken when the drivers arrived in Singapore, and provide them with copies of the original contracts they had signed in China.

And the drivers complained in the petition that SMRT had refused to pay out annual bonuses. In interviews, several drivers said they were owed bonuses worth one month’s salary – about S$1,000 (US$780) for each driver – that should have been paid annually.

SMRT, however, told the drivers it would disburse all bonuses at the end of their two-year contracts, the drivers recalled. SMRT declined to offer specific comment on the petition.

Click to view interactive

About 10 drivers hand-delivered the petition to the Ministry of Manpower – housed in a somber white-tiled building near the city’s Chinatown district – to explain their complaints to officials, according to two drivers familiar with the petition. SMRT executives arrived within half an hour, seeking to intervene and defuse the situation, drivers later recalled.

The Manpower Ministry later said in public statements that it had investigated and resolved the complaints that fell within its jurisdiction, and discussed the remainder with senior SMRT management. Company officials agreed to return the drivers’ passports and improve their bonus packages, drivers said.

Still, their other demands – including on lodging conditions – weren’t satisfactorily resolved, according to some drivers.

And, they said, most of the 10 drivers who delivered the petition were dismissed. Drivers interviewed did not know the exact number of those asked to leave, or precisely why SMRT dismissed them. SMRT declined to comment.

***
Chapter Three: Confrontation

SMRT Corp., one of Singapore’s most prominent companies, has for more than two decades been a standard bearer for the city’s public-transport system. But in November 2012, when its Chinese bus drivers refused to go to work one morning, it was seeking to restore its flagging reputation among locals.

Set up in 1987 to launch the city-state’s subway, SMRT won global repute for seamless efficiency and fuss-free urban travel.

The company became a private corporation in 2000, and Singapore’s state investment company Temasek Holdings Pte. Ltd. sold more than a third of its 100% stake that year. Temasek now owns about 54% of SMRT, according to Temasek and SMRT.

In the following years, SMRT expanded its interests into buses, taxis, convenience stores – even mini-malls in stations – as it competed with ComfortDelGro Corp., the other major public-transport player in Singapore.

But in December 2011, SMRT’s standing took a major hit when SMRT-run subway lines suffered two major breakdowns that left over 210,000 commuters temporarily stranded.

The disruptions were the worst in the network’s history, prompting public outrage, criticism of the company’s wide-ranging interests, and a rare government inquiry – a reflection of how seriously Singapore takes its record of orderliness and efficiency.

Less than a month later, the company’s chief executive resigned, saying she wanted to pursue personal interests. In July 2012, the inquiry into the service disruptions said it found management and operational shortcomings at SMRT and recommended broad remedies, but didn’t assign culpability to any individual.

“There is a need to position SMRT as principally an engineering and operations company,” it said.

SMRT, then led by an interim CEO, accepted the inquiry’s findings and pledged to implement its recommendations.

Desmond Kuek, a top bureaucrat at Singapore’s environment ministry and the former armed forces chief, took over as the new chief executive in October 2012.

“What is certain is that we are first and foremost a public-transport operator,” Mr. Kuek said on his first day in the job. “This is the core business that we are responsible for and must excel in.”

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

SMRT Corp. Chief Executive Desmond Kuek, pictured here in 2009 when he was chief of Singapore’s armed forces.

***

At the same time, however, tensions were mounting with SMRT’s Chinese drivers.

In May 2012, the company announced that it would switch its bus drivers to a six-day work week from five days. As part of changes that would take effect from July that year, the company raised basic monthly salaries by between S$75 and S$250 (US$59 to US$156), following a deal hashed out with union leaders. Mainland Chinese drivers received the smallest pay raise, S$75, bringing their base pay to S$1,075. Malaysian drivers’ pay rose S$150 to S$1,350.

Singaporean and Malaysian drivers turned to the National Transport Workers’ Union to push SMRT for more favorable terms – and got them. In October, SMRT upped the monthly pay raises it gave in July to permanent bus-driving staff, boosting their wages by between S$175 and S$400 a month compared to pre-July levels, according to SMRT statements and local media reports. The company also gave them an option to return to a five-day work week, which many drivers had preferred.

Mainland Chinese drivers, however, didn’t have the luxury of collective bargaining since they were contract workers who weren’t permitted to be full union members. The improved salary terms announced in October didn’t apply to them, fueling what drivers say was a sense of grievance that they were being discriminated against.

SMRT said in later public comments that it was within its legal rights to offer different base salaries and pay raises. A collective-bargaining agreement between SMRT and the NTWU that established basic employment terms only applied to “locally engaged employees in the company’s service” and not to “temporary employees and contract employees,” according to the agreement.

The company also said in response to queries from The Wall Street Journal that overall remuneration for its mainland Chinese and Malaysian workers is “equitable,” after factoring in subsidies for transport, lodging and utilities.

But what SMRT saw as lawful differences, Liu Xiangying felt was discrimination.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Liu Xiangying

The native of Liaoning province in northern China came to work for SMRT after seeing a newspaper advertisement in 2007, he said in a telephone interview. Having spent years driving buses in Inner Mongolia, he said Singapore’s allure had proved compelling.

“Singapore was a place I looked up to. It’s an organized and orderly country with strong rule of law,” the 33-year-old father of one said in the interview. “I had hopes of bringing my wife and daughter over to settle down.”

He said he arrived in Singapore only to find that his contract didn’t match what was promised him by the recruiters in China – a common complaint among Chinese drivers. Mr. Liu said he complained to SMRT but was met with noncommittal replies.

SMRT later said in response to queries from The Wall Street Journal that such complaints were passed on to relevant authorities for investigation.

***

By November 2012, Mr. Liu said his frustrations had festered for nearly four years. After getting his pay slip on Nov. 23, Mr. Liu said he met with two friends and co-workers who also were feeling disgruntled during their time in Singapore: Gao Yueqiang and Wang Xianjie.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Gao Yueqiang

Mr. Gao, who was 32 years old at the time, said he was the sole breadwinner for his wife and son in Liaoning province, according to court documents. Mr. Wang, a 39-year-old from Jilin province, had been away from his teenage daughter for about five years, since joining SMRT in December 2007, according to court documents.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Wang Xianjie

The trio knew each other from regular morning jogs. But when they met at that time to discuss their jobs, the mood was grim.

Grievances against SMRT dominated their conversation, according to interviews with Messrs. Liu, Gao and Wang.

The three men met again on Nov. 24 at the Sembawang God of Wealth temple, according to court documents that were filed later in connection with the bus drivers’ strike.

The Taoist temple – a four-floor building that is filled with golden idols and has a statue of the Chinese god of wealth perched on its red-tiled roof – is a popular place of worship for ethnic Chinese devotees. There, the three men discussed ideas for how they could press SMRT to address their frustrations, according to interviews with Messrs. Liu, Gao and Wang.

Their ideas included penning a letter to the chief executive, and filing petitions to the Manpower Ministry, the Land Transport Authority and the Chinese embassy, the trio said.

Another idea that came up at the meeting was taking medical leave en masse, according to prosecutors and court pleas submitted later by Messrs. Liu and Gao.

Later that day, Mr. Wang posted a message for SMRT drivers from China on an Internet messaging platform known as QQ, which was operated by China’s Tencent Holdings Ltd. He called on his colleagues to take medical leave on Monday and Tuesday, Nov. 26 and 27.

Chun Han Wong/The Wall Street Journal

The Sembawang God of Wealth Temple, located in Singapore’s northern Sembawang district.

Mr. Gao, meanwhile, said he took the idea to his roommate, He Junling, a fellow driver from central Henan province. Spurred by his own frustrations with SMRT, Mr. He composed a lengthy essay addressed to his colleagues, he said in an interview.

On Sunday, Nov. 25, Mr. He posted the Chinese piece on an Internet bulletin board run by Chinese Internet firm Baidu, he said. Its title: “The humiliation suffered by Singapore drivers (SMRT): Where’s the dignity of mainland Chinese bus captains,” according to copies seen by The Wall Street Journal.

“Please relay the message to as many as possible,” the essay stated. Most drivers socialized within cliques of about 20 to 30 people.

Mr. He also published his essay on the QQ chat group formed by Chinese bus drivers at SMRT, but only about 130 of them were active in the QQ group at the time it was posted.

At the Woodlands-district dormitory, where many of the Chinese drivers lived, Mr. He, along with Mr. Gao, visited between 30 to 40 coworkers in nearby bunks to spread the word: The job action was on for the next day.

Mr. He detailed online a plan of action for the walkout, according to court documents and archived QQ messages. His message struck a chord.

“Wake up early, gather in a large group at the dormitory gate, approach those who are boarding the shuttle buses and explain to them” the plan to strike, he wrote in a fresh QQ message published at 7:20 p.m. that Sunday.

“Don’t waste money calling the scheduling department to take leave, just go straight to a clinic.”

“I have no right to force you to not work, but I have a duty to let you know” of this plan, he wrote in the QQ message viewed by The Wall Street Journal. “We are doing this for the well-being and dignity of us Chinese people.”

“I support,” many wrote in reply. “It’s time to fight back,” another wrote.

***

In the strike’s early hours on the morning of Monday, Nov. 26, participants harried each other for live updates of the situation, posting unconfirmed reports.

Over the Internet and their mobile phones, some wondered which co-workers were participating, and how many. How would SMRT respond, others asked.

“What the heck, those in Ang Mo Kio have all gone to work,” a driver wrote on the QQ group, according to QQ chat transcripts provided by defense lawyers involved in a subsequent court case related to the strike. “Damned traitors,” another driver wrote. Ang Mo Kio, a district in central Singapore, was where one of SMRT’s bus depots was located.

“Haha! No one at Kranji [bus depot] went to work!” another worker reported on the same QQ group.

“Good on those in Woodlands. Don’t be like the bunch of cowering turtles in Ang Mo Kio,” a driver wrote in the message forum. “We have got to force a resolution out of this, and not give up halfway.”

***

SMRT executives arrived at the Woodlands dormitory mid-morning seeking answers to why the company’s Chinese drivers were refusing to work, according to the drivers and QQ chat logs.

Officials from the Ministry of Manpower soon followed, as did dozens of reporters, according to prosecutors, and drivers.

Company officials proposed ferrying the drivers to an SMRT facility in central Singapore with an auditorium large enough to hold all the protesters, drivers said. Many drivers agreed, they said. Still in their uniforms, they awaited the transport.

By going on a wildcat strike the drivers had already committed a technical offense, which carries penalties of a jail sentence of up to a year or a fine of up to S$2,000, or both. But several said they didn’t know that at the time.

“Don’t be afraid! The law won’t punish mass actions,” a driver wrote in the QQ group.

Soon after, officers from the Police Tactical Unit – a paramilitary riot-control force – arrived at the scene in their trademark bright-red vehicles, according to drivers and local media. The vehicles are known colloquially as “Ang Chia,” or “red car” in the Hokkien dialect from China’s southeastern Fujian province.

Many drivers said they were spooked by their arrival, so they dispersed and returned to their rooms, scrubbing plans for the offsite talks.

SMRT officials then proposed a 3 p.m. meeting in the dormitory courtyard, a space they thought would be big enough to hold everyone, according to Mr. He, the driver from Henan who penned an online essay encouraging the strike. But that plan was washed out by rain showers.

Just before 4 p.m., SMRT started ushering drivers into the dormitory’s security office, according to Mr. He.

About 40 to 50 workers squeezed inside. Others waited outside, Mr. He recalled.

Kang Huey Ling, then vice president of SMRT’s bus operations, led the meeting, flanked by her colleagues, Mr. He said. Manpower Ministry officials, policemen and recruitment agency staff also lined the walls, according to prosecutors and Mr. He.

The room was teeming but the mood was calm, Mr. He recalled.

“What you have done today is inappropriate,” Ms. Kang said in Mandarin, according to Mr. He’s and prosecutors’ accounts. “There are internal channels that you can use to voice concerns to us.”

“If those channels had worked, we wouldn’t have chosen to do what we have done,” replied a driver, according to Mr. He. “We felt that we had no other choice.”

A ministry official reminded the drivers that protesting was an inappropriate way of airing grievances, according to prosecutors and Mr. He.

The drivers took turns to speak, pressing for equal treatment with Malaysian drivers and better lodgings, Mr. He said.

Ms. Kang assured drivers that they would get a raise of S$25 a month, according to Mr. He and SMRT public statements after the meeting. She asked for a week to consider the other concerns, according to Mr. He and SMRT.

Drivers say the meeting was the first time they had heard of the S$25 raise, though SMRT later said in public statements that it had already decided to give the increase before the strike and had been planning to inform the drivers.

A driver asked the others present if they were agreeable to the offer, but got a lukewarm response, Mr. He recalled later.

Another driver, Bao Fengshan, warned that another strike could occur if SMRT didn’t meet the drivers’ demands within a week, according to court documents filed later in a case related to the strike.

“There’s only about 40 to 50 drivers here now, and there are more than a hundred others who aren’t here and don’t know what was discussed,” Mr. He asked, he recalled later. “What about them?”

“If they have any further concerns, they can communicate with us through internal company channels,” Ms. Kang replied, according to Mr. He.

With that, the SMRT executives seemed to think that they had a deal, Mr. He recalled. They closed the meeting at about 6 p.m. In response to queries from The Wall Street Journal, SMRT neither confirmed nor denied the drivers’ characterization of events before and during the meeting, but said that they were based on “claims made by the bus captains.” Efforts to reach Ms. Kang directly were unsuccessful.

Later that night, the company issued a statement saying executives had persuaded the drivers to return to work.

“We regret that they chose to express their unhappiness about their salaries in this manner, especially when our lines of communication with them are always open,” SMRT said.

The company apologized to the public for the inconvenience caused and added that the drivers “will be returning to work tomorrow.”

It spoke too soon.

***
Chapter Four: Counterpunch

Wang Yong, a Chinese bus driver working for Singaporean transport operator SMRT, said he faced a hostile reception when he returned to his dormitory the evening of Monday, Nov. 26, weary after a lengthy shift behind the wheel.

In an interview, the 40-year-old said he wondered: What have I done now?

Wang Yong

The strike put bus driver Wang Yong in a quandary

For him and some other mainland Chinese SMRT drivers living at a dormitory in the Serangoon district of Singapore, a bus strike called by their colleagues living in a Woodlands-district workers’ dormitory that day had seemed far removed.

News of the strike had reached Mr. Wang through Singaporean and Malaysian colleagues at work, he said, but he hadn’t given it much thought.

“Those who went to work today aren’t human! They aren’t fit to be Chinese nationals,” one of his co-workers bellowed, Mr. Wang recalled later in an interview.

Less than six months into the job, Mr. Wang said he wasn’t inclined to risk his livelihood by joining the action.

He said he arrived in June 2012 from Chengdu – capital of China’s southwestern Sichuan province – lured by the prospect of earning more to help provide for his wife and 13-year-old son. Mr. Wang, who also drove buses back home, said he was a long way from recouping the 26,300 yuan (US$4,300) he said he had paid to recruitment agents.

“Unlike those who had worked in Singapore for years, I hadn’t recovered my initial capital. I wasn’t keen on making trouble,” he said.

His co-workers who had stayed away from work that day tried to persuade him to join the cause, which entailed applying for medical leave en masse to skip work.

They reminded him about their grievances over accommodation and pay, he said.

It worked.

“In the end, we didn’t think the consequences would be too severe,” Mr. Wang said. “We felt, since so many people were in the protest together, the company would be forced to start serious dialogue with us.”

The next morning, he and four friends headed straight to a clinic, he said. Mr. Wang said he told the doctor he suffered from sore hips – a real issue but one that he said he had worked through in the past. The doctor prescribed some medication, and signed a chit for a day’s rest, he said.

His supervisor didn’t seem bothered when he called Mr. Wang, according to Mr. Wang. “Sure thing, don’t worry about it,” Mr. Wang recalled him saying. SMRT declined comment.

***

Associated Press

SMRT bus drivers head to work on Nov. 27.

On Tuesday, Nov. 27, the morning that followed the first day of the strike, SMRT’s shuttle buses left the Woodlands-district dormitory with over a dozen drivers, down from the usual 70 or 80, according to He Junling, a driver from China’s Henan province who had encouraged drivers not to go to work.

Some 112 mainland Chinese drivers from across Singapore, assigned to morning and afternoon shifts, didn’t show for work that day, according to statements later made by prosecutors. Some were holding out from Monday, but others, like Mr. Wang, were striking for the first time.

SMRT officials again scurried to the scene at the Woodlands dormitory, according to drivers and a Wall Street Journal reporter present at the scene.

This time, officials from the transport-workers’ union and the Chinese embassy joined them, hoping to talk the drivers into ending their strike, according to a public statement issued by the embassy. A police posse kept watch outside, as did a gaggle of reporters.

Many of the drivers remained indoors to avoid the media scrum. But a handful emerged, stopping by the adjoining food center for meals.

“We’re not asking to be treated in the same way as Singaporeans. We understand why the locals should be better-paid,” one of the drivers said to the dozen reporters who swarmed his table. “We only want to be treated the same way as the Malaysian drivers are.”

Reporters asked the driver, a man in his thirties who said he had a wife and an 11-year-old son back home in Jiangsu province, if he feared arrest for not working.

“I didn’t beat up or kill anyone. I didn’t do anything illegal,” he replied. “I’m merely exercising my right to rest.”

This time, however, SMRT didn’t attempt to negotiate a settlement, according to Mr. He, the driver from Henan province who had penned an essay online encouraging the strike.

“They seemed to have made up their minds. They wanted us to be handled by the law,” he said.

SMRT declined to comment on whether its officials held any formal meeting with the drivers who missed work on Tuesday.

***

Surveys by local media found few commuters had actually been affected by the walkout. Officials later said SMRT maintained more than 90% of normal services during the strike.

But the strike split opinion among Singaporeans.

Bloomberg

Singapore’s skyline

For some, it was an affront to the rule of law and public order so prized by Singaporean authorities. To others, it highlighted Singapore’s over-reliance on foreign labor and served as a reminder of the public’s lack of concern for migrant workers.

“The government should take these PRC [People’s Republic of China nationals] to task for striking. They have no respect for the local law and think this is China,” a reader wrote in comments on the Straits Times newspaper’s website. “This kind of incident will happen again if no action is taken against them.”

In a poll conducted by government feedback website Reach, about 78% of 313 respondents said they agreed that any mainland Chinese driver found to have committed offences by going on strike “should be punished to the full extent of the law.”

Others were more forgiving. Labor activists argued in media commentaries and online forums that SMRT and the government should shoulder some blame for allowing tensions to fester.

The strike raised questions on “whether [the workers] have a proper channel to seek redress when they feel discriminated at the workplace,” an unemployment counselor wrote in a letter to the Straits Times.

About 90% of foreign workers in Singapore aren’t union members. In recent years, some of them have resorted to protests against alleged exploitation by employers, including a sit-in by Bangladeshi construction workers in February 2012 over what they said were unpaid salaries.

Officials quickly intervened in many of these cases, including the February 2012 incident, and reprimanded employers found to have mistreated workers. But authorities downplayed these episodes as labor disputes, never describing them as strikes.

***

On Tuesday evening, Kang Huey Ling, then SMRT’s vice president of bus operations, paid a visit to the Police Cantonment Complex, home to the Singapore police’s Criminal Investigation Department, according to prosecutors’ later statements.

At about 6:48 p.m., she was received by an officer and filed a complaint against the striking drivers, alleging their protest was illegal, prosecutors’ statements said.

Later that evening, Singapore’s Manpower and Transport ministries summoned local news media to a briefing.

“These workers have disrupted public transport services and Singapore’s industrial harmony. The government views these disruptions very seriously,” Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin said at the briefing.

He added that the ministry “understands the bus drivers’ grievances.” Still, he said, “There are right ways and wrong ways to handle these concerns… This illegal strike is not acceptable and would be dealt with in accordance to the law.”

For the first time, Singaporean authorities had described the unfolding episode as a “strike,” a label that SMRT and media had also avoided using until then. Using the term prepared the way for the government to enforce laws against work stoppages it deemed illegal.

***

Police moved in the next morning, hauling about 20 mainland Chinese drivers into the Police Cantonment Complex for questioning, according to drivers. Almost all other drivers returned to their jobs, save for six of them later deemed by SMRT to have had valid reasons for missing work.

Investigators quickly identified who they believed to be the leading figures behind the strike: He Junling, the writer of an essay encouraging drivers to miss work; and Liu Xiangying, Gao Yueqiang and Wang Xianjie, the three men accused of helping to hatch the idea for the incident. They were arrested.

What happened next to Messrs. He and Liu remains contested.

According to the two men, police investigators punched them when they – in separate interrogations in different rooms – answered that they didn’t know each other. The two drivers said they only became acquainted after their arrests.

Mr. He said that his interrogator punched him once in the stomach, while Mr. Liu accused an officer of hitting him a few times on the torso. According to Mr. Liu, his interrogator told him: “Do you know I could dig a hole and have you buried in it, and no one would be able to find you?”

Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Manpower said in a joint April 20 statement that Messrs. He and Liu’s statements were “baseless.”

Internal police investigations into the claims didn’t uncover any wrongdoing, according to the Home Affairs ministry.

“We take allegations of police abuse very seriously, especially when they are formally lodged, and investigate them thoroughly,” Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister Teo Chee Hean said in the statement. In this case, “the investigations have vindicated the officers in this case and protected their reputations.”

Messrs. He and Liu later declined to pursue the matter, a decision that Singapore authorities said meant the drivers were retracting their allegations.

The two men, in interviews with The Wall Street Journal, maintained their claims and said they had decided not to pursue the matter only because they didn’t want to prolong their stay in Singapore to the detriment of their families, as both men were sole breadwinners.

Mr. He, in a separate statement he issued after returning to China, said he thought it would be difficult to pursue the matter, given the lack of witnesses and video recordings of the interrogation.

In an April 26 statement, the Home Affairs and Manpower Ministries said that Mr. He’s statement was “reckless” and “unfounded.”

“Either he makes a police report and substantiates his allegation with evidence or the allegations must be regarded as unfounded and spurious,” the ministries said.

***
Chapter Five: The Gavel Falls

On Thursday, Nov. 29, two days after a strike by Chinese bus drivers captured public attention in Singapore, prosecutors charged four men – He Junling, Liu Xiangying, Gao Yueqiang and Wang Xianjie – with engaging in a conspiracy to instigate others to participate in a strike.

Mr. He faced an additional count of incitement, related to an Internet essay he wrote to spur on his co-workers.

At least an additional 50 drivers were picked up on that day for questioning, according to drivers who were part of that investigation. Police released them within hours, according to the drivers. Police have not commented on the drivers’ specific accounts.

Police detained a fifth man a day later. Bao Fengshan, a 38-year-old who joined joined Singaporean transport operator SMRT Corp. in 2008, was charged with participating in the strike.

Prosecutors said in a court submission that he made “threatening comments” during a meeting with SMRT officials on the first day of the strike. Prosecutors said he suggested that a further strike might happen if the drivers’ demands weren’t met within a week.

He later pleaded guilty without engaging a lawyer, was sentenced to six weeks in jail, and then returned to China, according to court documents. He could not be located.

By then, the drama in Singapore had caught the attention of Beijing. In a statement, China’s Commerce Ministry said it hoped “all relevant parties can treat the requests of the Chinese drivers fairly, respond to their requests actively and take care of them reasonably to defend [their] legitimate rights.”

***

As public debate over the strike intensified, the Singapore government pressed SMRT to address its drivers’ grievances.

But it also stressed that the protesters could have sought help through official channels, noting that many of their recent objections—such as perceived discrimination—hadn’t been reported to the authorities prior to the strike.

In the days after the strike, SMRT executives started visiting the mainland Chinese drivers, promising to review their salary requests and address their concerns over lodging, according to SMRT statements at the time.

Contractors were brought in to repair defects and broken fittings in the dormitories, while pest-control firms arrived to kill bedbugs, according to SMRT statements. Alternative accommodations were arranged for drivers who asked to move out of their current quarters, the statements said.

SMRT Chief Executive Desmond Kuek, who was on holiday in the U.S. when the strike occurred, also met personally with drivers from China after the strike ended. He assured them of a S$25-per-month (US$19.50) wage increase, backdated to July, that would bring their monthly pay to S$1,100 (US$859), which SMRT said it had already planned to implement in December.

But he told the drivers that no pay raise beyond that would be made, according to a transcript of his comments provided by SMRT.

Mr. Kuek and other SMRT officials explained that the company was paying the Chinese drivers lower basic salaries than their Malaysian colleagues to make up for the costs of subsidizing accommodation for the mainland Chinese drivers, according to SMRT statements.

“It is unfortunate that this incident has happened,” Mr. Kuek said in a Nov. 30 statement.

“It shows that more needs to be done by management to proactively manage and engage” the drivers.

Even as SMRT mopped up the strike’s aftermath, the government was preparing a response of its own.

***

Wang Yong

The strike put bus driver Wang Yong in a quandary.

Wang Yong, a driver at the Serangoon-district workers’ complex, said he and other workers returned to their jobs on Wednesday, his backing of the strike cooled by the government’s tough rhetoric.

He spent several hours on Thursday speaking to police investigators, he recalled later, cooperating with their queries and arguing that he had received legitimate medical leave.

That, he hoped, would be the end of it.

In the wee hours of Saturday morning, after Mr. Wang pulled a late-night shift, his supervisor rang him up, he said in an interview.

“The police need you to go back for further investigation,” the supervisor said, Mr. Wang recalled. “They’ll pick you up in the morning.”

He said he roused before 8 a.m., had breakfast and waited.

An SMRT bus arrived soon after, he said. The vehicle meandered through the streets then took an unfamiliar route, making Mr. Wang nervous, he said.

The bus pulled up at Admiralty West Prison, a remote facility near Singapore’s northern coastline, according to Mr. Wang, as well as another driver.

Other vehicles also arrived, ferrying drivers from the Woodlands-district dormitory. Dozens of police and immigration officers awaited the 29 drivers who were brought in, the drivers said.

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

An SMRT bus leaves the Admiralty West prison after taking mainland Chinese bus drivers to the prison in Singapore on Dec. 1, 2012.

An official stepped forward. “We’re repatriating all of you back to China,” Mr. Wang recalled him saying in Mandarin.

The drivers insisted they didn’t do anything wrong, according to some of the drivers present, including Mr. Wang.

The official was unmoved, they said.

Another driver came forward. “Tell me. What offense have I committed?” he asked, Mr. Wang recalled.

The official said the drivers had committed an offense by participating in the strike, and that repatriation was the penalty, according to Mr. Wang and another driver.

“The decision has been made,” the official said firmly, according to Mr. Wang. “There is no room for negotiation.”

Government officers proceeded to revoke the men’s work permits and driving licenses, and booked them on flights to their home provinces in China, according to drivers present and a government statement issued that day, Dec. 1.

SMRT officials terminated the drivers’ contracts and made arrangements to settle outstanding salaries, according to an SMRT statement and drivers.

“You are being issued a warning, but none of you will be charged,” a police officer told Mr. Wang, according to the driver.

The 29 drivers were made to change into prison garb and ushered into cells, where they were given dinner, according to drivers.

They had no access to lawyers and were barred from making phone calls, drivers said. But they were allowed to speak to visiting Chinese embassy officials.

“Some drivers were shouting continuously from their cells, hurling abuse,” Mr. Wang recalled. “But I realized it was pointless. The Singapore government had made up its mind, and we couldn’t do anything about it.”

Under Singapore labor regulations, authorities have the right to revoke foreigners’ work permits and deport them if they violate local laws and certain employment conditions.

All 29 drivers were dispatched for home late Saturday night and early Sunday morning, according to a government statement.

SMRT did not comment on the specifics of how the deportation was handled.

In a joint Dec. 1 statement, the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Manpower said the 29 drivers had “disrupted our public transport which is an essential service, and posed a threat to public order.” They were “blatant and persistent in their unlawful acts,” the ministries said.

***

The men accused of being the strike’s ringleaders, meanwhile, faced trial in Singapore’s justice system.

On Dec. 6, He Junling, Liu Xiangying, Gao Yueqiang and Wang Xianjie were brought back to court.

According to Mr. He and Mr. Liu, police investigators had tried to discourage them from engaging lawyers, saying such a move could result in heavier punishment than if they pleaded guilty immediately. The police didn’t respond to queries about this claim.

The drivers told the court they wanted to engage lawyers, and the judge set bail at S$10,000 each for Messrs. Liu, Gao and Wang, and S$20,000 for Mr. He, according to defense lawyers and prosecutors.

Activists and migrant-worker advocacy groups helped the four men post bail and provided them with meals and accommodation, according to drivers and activists involved.

Support also came from as far afield as Hong Kong, where local unionists staged a protest, calling on Singaporean authorities to drop charges against the drivers, according to a statement from the unionists and media reports in the Straits Times and other publications.

In February, the four men decided to take the case to trial, rejecting an offer from prosecutors to amend their charges from instigating the strike to mere participation in return for guilty pleas, according to state prosecutors, defense lawyers and Messrs. He and Liu.

Although both offenses were punishable by up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine, participation is typically considered to be a lesser crime than instigating a strike.

But as the process wore on, the men changed their minds, according to Messrs. He and Liu, as well as lawyers representing Messrs. Gao and Wang.

“All of us also have families back home to feed,” said Mr. He in an interview, adding that the men didn’t want to make matters difficult for some colleagues who were still being asked to assist police investigations. “So we decided to speed up the process,” he said.

Mr. He told his lawyers that he would plead guilty in return for a seven-week jail term, while the others said they would accept six weeks, Mr. He, defense lawyers and prosecutors said.

Messrs. He, Liu, Gao and Wang all pleaded guilty to instigating a strike when they reappeared in court on Feb. 25, while Mr. He pleaded guilty to the additional charge of incitement.

Before sentencing, their lawyers asked the court to consider lighter sentences, according to court documents.

“It was never Jun Ling’s intention to startle or alarm the public, nor was it a calculated plan of his to unsettle labor relations in Singapore for personal gain,” Peter Low and Choo Zhengxi, counsels to Mr. He, wrote in their court submissions.

“His actions came from a place of deep desperation and despair at his living conditions, discriminatory pay, and a lack of an outlet to express his grievances.”

Mark Goh, the lawyer who represented Messrs. Liu and Gao, told the court that the drivers had chosen to avoid work by taking medical leave, as opposed to “an outright defiant refusal to go to work,” according to court submissions reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

This showed that the men “were still mindful and respectful of the parameters of their employment terms” and couldn’t have planned to cripple the public-transport network, as their plan was dependent upon the discretion of third-party doctors, Mr. Goh wrote in court submissions.

Prosecutors, however, in their court submissions pressed the judge to impose more than “a mere fine or a nominal imprisonment term.”

Ministry of Manpower

Above, Singapore’s historical strike data from 1946 to 2009. In this chart, man-days lost refer to the total number of working days lost annually due to industrial action. It is calculated by multiplying the duration of industrial actions (in days) with the number of workers that were affected. 

“The actions of the four accused persons played an undoubted part in precipitating a situation that had an adverse impact on our public transport services,” Francis Ng and Peggy Pao-Keerthi, both deputy public prosecutors, said in their submission.

“It is thus vital that a deterrent signal be sent to dissuade others from committing similar offenses to obtain concessions from their employers, lest such conduct ultimately prove inimical to the well-being of the public,” they said.

Judge See Kee Oon sentenced Mr. He to seven weeks in jail. Messrs. Liu, Gao and Wang each received a six-week sentence.

Neither SMRT nor the government commented on the sentencing.

***

After serving their sentences, all four drivers returned to China. In total, 34 drivers were deported for their roles in the strike.

In the months since, some of them have secured new work while others were still searching when contacted by The Wall Street Journal.

Several of the men said they were trying to put the past behind them, but the sting from their experiences lingered.

“I do feel that I was treated unfairly,” said Wang Yong, the driver who said he was deported even though he only stayed away from work for one day. But “I can understand why the Singapore government chose to do what it did, acting quickly to discourage more labor unrest.”

He has since found work as a machinist at a Chinese construction company in Angola.

“What has happened has happened, it’s time to move on,” He Junling, the writer of an online essay encouraging the strike, said in an interview from his home in Henan province, where he found a new job in what he described as a “managerial-type role” at a factory.

But Singapore, he said, could do more for its foreign labor, a group that he felt was underappreciated by its hosts.

“Migrant workers contribute so much to Singapore’s success, doing dirty and menial jobs that Singaporeans don’t want to do,” Mr. He said. “They deserve respect.”

Still, for drivers that remained in Singapore – and for new drivers who arrived since – the work environment has improved a bit as a result of what happened, according to SMRT statements and drivers who spoke to The Wall Street Journal. In some ways, the protest worked.

Drivers hired from China on two-year contracts now receive the same performance incentives as drivers of other nationalities, according to an SMRT statement. They also get a 13th-month bonus and a year-end variable bonus. SMRT said it took steps to improve dormitory conditions, including moving some drivers to better facilities and reorganizing work schedules to allow adequate rest.

The company also revamped its human-resources department, disciplined under-performing supervisors and improved communication channels with its workers, it said.

The National Transport Workers’ Union has been actively encouraging foreign workers to become members, an official at the union’s parent entity—the National Trades Union Congress—said in response to questions from The Wall Street Journal.

The NTWU now counts about 86% of SMRT’s mainland Chinese bus drivers – or about 380 people – as associate members, though contract workers like those from China remain excluded from full membership under the terms of the union’s collective agreement with SMRT.

Associate members can seek union help to engage management on workplace grievances, although they remain excluded from collective-bargaining processes that determine pay and other working conditions.

On the government’s part, the Manpower Ministry has pledged to step up protections for vulnerable workers and encourage companies to improve mechanisms for handling employees’ grievances, Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan-Jin told Parliament in February.

“No matter how we painstakingly manage industrial relations, problems will emerge and disputes will occur,” Prime Minister Lee said in his May Day speech, making his first public comments on the SMRT strike.

“The government’s position is clear: We cannot tolerate any party taking illegal action, or deliberately damaging our harmonious industrial relations,” Mr. Lee said. “This is the Singapore way – we must preserve this fine spirit.”

–THE END–

Singapore Strike: The Full Story