Migrant Workers – opportunity or threat?

Jenny Oliveros Lao - MBA, MA in Literature. Lecturer of School of Management, Leadership and Government of IIUM.

Foreign labour is a sensitive topic in Macau. While there are many complaining that migrant workers are threatening their employment opportunities, some small businesses are closing down because of the lack of blue card quotas for hiring foreign workers. So, are migrant workers a threat or an opportunity for Macau’s rapid development?
First, let’s consider the high skilled workforce. With the increasing number of high school graduates going on to tertiary education, and adults going back to school to pursue their first or a higher level degree, there is a great demand for academics. In the meantime, there are not enough local scholars to fill these positions, so the only thing universities can do is to hire from abroad. In addition, with more foreign professors coming to Macau to train local students, there is a higher possibility that in a few years’ time, Macau could provide qualified personnel to take up these academic positions.
Then, there are the huge resorts and casinos importing workers from abroad to fill up the top and middle management positions. Is Macau really unable to provide high quality people for these positions? Not that we don’t have the people, but managing large resorts is still new to our young professionals. There are more and more management graduates in Macau, and now, the opportunity to practice what they’ve learned from books can supplement what they lack, experience.
If in ten years time, we still don’t see local professionals taking up most of the managerial positions in those large corporations, then we can complain about those companies favouring foreign labour. However, in the meantime, we should make use of this chance to acquire the skills needed for our own career development. It is not just labour that is imported to our city, but knowledge. And this knowledge can be acquired both through learning from foreign managers, as well as from observing their mistakes. Through this learning process, we are preparing ourselves to face the even greater development of Macau in the future.
Finally, are the unskilled foreign workers threatening the jobs of local waiters and cleaners? For one thing, not many local citizens are willing to take up these positions. It is true that casinos and resorts should first consider local citizens for these positions, but small businesses could not offer the salary now demanded by local workers, or even if they can, they cannot find local workers with the right skills, for instance, English and Mandarin, for restaurants whose target customers are tourists. This has led to a few small businesses closing down due to the lack of human resources. So, is this good or bad for Macau?
There is one restaurant which is forced to hire staff from the Philippines and Mainland China because they cannot find staff in Macau. This has resulted in staff being able to speak some level of English, Mandarin and Cantonese since they were teaching each other their languages. Of course, migrant workers are still a threat for certain jobs in some industry’s because of the lower labour cost. But if we look at it from a more positive perspective, on every level, they provide learning opportunities for local labour which cannot be obtained from classrooms.

©MDTimes/ Macau Inter-University Institute