Guillotining Middle Managers During Company Restructuring

Common symptom of govt jobs, govt-linked companies(GLC)) & large corpserations:

"Restructuring was done because the company had become bureaucratic & slow in decision making. It was to streamline our operations to make it more responsive to our customer needs."

Neptune Orient Lines(GLC) grabbed headlines when it announced it is selling its HQ building after 5 qtrs of losses. Larger shipping firms like Maersk & Evergreen have dumped higher cost S'pore & shifted to Tanjung Pelepas at Johor, Msia within sight from sg's Tuas immigration link.

News of selling the HQ came after annoncement of guillotining workers to cut costs in May. NOL can save more by guillotining those managers who follows procedures & orders to the letter - can be automated. Those NOL managers think they are smart playing it safe by follow procedures & orders to letter. Little do those Papa, Mama, Uncles & Aunties know they are at most risk. Act like robot = automate.

If can't automate, then those Papa, Mama, Uncles & Aunties can be replaced with generally cheaper foreign workers which the Pro Alien Party is fond of. Since so good at following procedures/orders to letter it means someone cheaper can follow as well. What's so difficult about following orders since school factories spits out cog workers who do as ordered?

"NOL said the poorer performance was due to high fuel costs & low freight rates in container shipping."

Again this brings us back to what local SME biz owners are lamenting:

"From biz owner's point of view, there's a limit how low costs can go, a limit how much people will pay for stuff, but there's no limit to rising rentals."

S'pore under the Pro Alien Party is on a downward spiral. With govt-linked companies (mostly run by scholars) making up 50-60% of the economy excluding govt jobs, 'renegades' such as the zero score student which can turn the company around with their unusual thinking are virtually non-existant in GLC's compliant & paper cert culture.

GLC's compliant culture doesn't like a cog workers for questioning superior about why need to find stuff to buy so as to spend the $$. In a sense those companies falling into tough financial situations with $M losses deserve what they get with their bureaucratic culture & just follow procedures/orders from their army of yes yes yes yesmen/yeswomen.

Another downward spiral is the peril of hiring cheaper foreign workers is they overwhelming dun care if the order carried out is bad. Just execute the bad order & collect S$ & then go back home country for a good life. Locals who question the order are seen as 'troublemakers'.