A rise in the number of heat related injuries in Exxonmobil’s Singapore plant raises questions on employee welfare, overly stressful working conditions and arrogance on the part of the management in recognising that the retrenchment exercise held last year was a huge mistake.
Employees who are based outdoors, bore the brunt of the retrenchment exercise, filling in for the tasks which has now been long vacated. Throughout the pandemic, work has never really slowed down as what Exxonmobil management would like the Authorities to think. On top of the contracts which Exxon has to honour, our production focus just shifted to other petroleum derived products. For example, the world demand for PPE has seen Exxonmobil’s Chemical Business thrive under the cloak of an uncertain world.
This misinformation is not just pushed down the throats of the local government officials. Rather, it has also been emphasised on us that the company is facing “hard times”. As a person living under the fear of getting booted out, like many of our retrenched employees, we were tasked with auditing each others’ work. Basically the management just want us to find fault on each other. Tell me how the place cannot become toxic?
Everyone is quietly fighting for his/her chance to stay. So everyone is trying their best to outperform each other - even it means that you’d collapse under the immense workload. And any faults or shortcomings are not seen with empathy from the management.