The Brand Name

​You can tell from his brightly booming voice and ramrod posture that, in his younger days, Tay Khoon Beng used to be a military man. In 1996, when Mr. Tay – as he is popularly known by industry insiders – was considering a career switch, his wife believed that his experience in Singapore’s Navy made him an ideal candidate for running an employment agency which matches migrant domestic workers to Singaporean households.
 
The Navy, his wife quipped, gave him with the skills necessary to ensure the seamless working of the many moving parts of a transnational business.  
 
Twenty years later, Mr. Tay now presides over Best Home Employment Agency, which boasts one of the highest placement volumes in Singapore. Within the business, Best Home is known as one of the ‘big boys’: between October 2015-October 2016, the agency placed 2008 workers, or an average of 167 workers per month. The industry average is 85 workers per month.

We pay a visit to Keramat Dormitory, where major employment agencies in Singapore accommodate the domestic workers that they recruit and place. The workers who stay here may be new hires; they sleep in this dormitory amidst sorting out their Work Permit applications and attending orientation programmes. Some workers may be in between contracts, or may be caught up in cases under investigation by the Ministry of Manpower.

​​Mr. Tay's approach is to combine the ‘big boy’ brand name with the ‘mom and pop’ personal touch.
 
He attributes his agency’s success to getting the details right. Acknowledging the tensions inherent in sharing a small home space, he gives personal grooming kits to domestic workers placed by his agency in order to smooth over the awkwardness of having to ask employers to purchase intimate toiletries.

A small provision shop sells snacks to domestic workers in Keramat Dorm. It's manned by domestic workers on rotation.

Best Home also gives each domestic worker a SIM card so that they can keep in touch with the agency, and so that Mr. Tay can share information about news items which might concern them, such as natural disasters in their home countries.
 
Domestic workers are visibly active on Best Home’s Facebook page, sending birthday wishes to agents, writing in with complaints and questions, and commenting on photographs and links.
 
Using phones and social media to connect constitute what he calls a ‘secret link’ between domestic workers and Best Home’s agents.  
 
“A lot of things are solved in the dark,” Mr. Tay says, noting that issues with employers are often de-escalated before spiralling into bigger problems which are more difficult to resolve.  

The women staying at the dorm are rostered to prep food for lunch and dinner.

Handmade signs warn against eating in the rooms and exhort workers to wake up early.

Activities include volleyball and karaoke.

The beds in the dormitory are wrapped in disposable sheets, to be thrown away between the stays of each worker. The dormitory operators are wary of bedbugs.

​As an old hand within the industry, Mr. Tay says that he is also constantly thinking about how to set higher standards.
 
For example, he suggests that migrant workers be differentiated into two categories: caregivers, who might stay full-time with those who are in need of care; and live-out housekeepers, who can service more than a single home per week. This offers workers greater job mobility, aligns with Indonesia’s labour standards, and, according to Mr. Tay, is the only way forward from our current migration industry model.  

Another change he proposes would be to move to electronic payments as an industry standard, instead of using what he calls the “ancient way of recording their salary on papers.” 

The Cost of Care | The Big Boy from Asia Research Institute on Vimeo.

​Mr. Tay’s 20-year tenure in the business and the extent of his operations means that he has to anticipate long-term changes within the industry and to recognise the strengths and weaknesses of Singapore’s position as a country of destination for migrant domestic workers in the region.
 
“Donkey years ago, all the maids had no Internet, the whole world had no aeroplanes, and only agents knew how to bring in the workers,” he says. “But this is a very modern world now. The girls are mobile, everything is mobile.” 

A strange collection of squeegees in the backyard of the dormitory. The mops and brooms look abashed, in comparison.

As of September 2016, Best Home has begun to move domestic workers to new lodgings at Juniper Lodge. These lodgings offer amenities such as a sick bay, a computer room, and a gym.

​In order to secure Singapore’s position as a destination country and to pre-empt the overriding political shift in sending countries towards sending only skilled workers abroad to work, Mr. Tay calls for a fundamental rethinking of the entire industry.
 
“Whether or not employers and agents can adapt fast enough to source country requirements is the key to our sustainability,” he says. 
 
“Employers must change their mindsets,” he adds. “They cannot think that, ‘oh, a poor woman from a Third World country must definitely come to me as a domestic helper’, because you have to fulfil the source country’s requirements. If you don’t, the source country will look around – the whole of Asia is ageing, not just Singapore. The whole of Asia is prosperous, not just Singapore!” 

Images: Grace Baey
Text: Kellynn Wee
Special thanks to Tiffany Eng

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