Racial issues at workplace..or Was it?

I was reading online articles on PM's Lee National Day Rally speech and his focus race and religion. Deep in my heart, I believed it's a timely reflection. This brought me back to this incident not too long ago which involved a promotion exercise.

A total of 5 guys were promoted to a supervisory level , which was a new post. Formerly all of them were rank and file workers. Although promotions are stipulated clearly in Industrial Relation Act as Management Prerogatives,us unionist never see it as a hindrance to highlight to the management if a worker is due or deserve a promotion. Back to the 5 guys, naturally the union was happy that all of them were promoted after a year long negotiation to create that new supervisory post. Out of these 5 guys who were promoted, 4 were Chinese and one was a Malay. This was when the problem started.

Some of my Malay colleagues were'nt happy with the result of the promotion exercise. In total, there were another 4 Malay guys (with additional certification and experience in covering supervisory duties) who also applied for the post. Two of the Chinese guys who got promoted has got no additional certification while the rest possessed one. Moreover, both the Chinese guys were reluctant parties when in comes cover 'acting duties' as supervisor when they were still rank and file workers. I heard some accusation of racial bias although the union did'nt received any formal grievance letter (a standard procedure) on this issue.The union was in a dilemma.

As a unionist, irregardless of colour or nationality, if he is our member, we do not challenge the promotion. I felt that I neededed to be very tactful in addressing this sensitive issue. As with all promotion exercise, each candidate goes thru a vigorous interview session and selection procedure. Coincidentally, the interviewers comprised of a multi-racial panel. I reasoned with some of the unhappy workers that although the two guys may not have the qualification, probably they did better than then rest in the interview. I downplayed any racial overtones or racial bias in the issue.

I encouraged them to keep upgrading themselves and to look at the bright side.End of the day, if you believe in the meritocracy system, your hard work will get noticed and paid off. There'll be no reason for the management not to promote you, I told them.

I eventually managed to convince them and after a few weeks, the issue was a thing of the past. I was glad that the issue doesn't escalate into something serious and the workers accepted it in a sensible and matured manner. But I told myself, we must never be complacent. What happen if we faced a similar issue in the future?Are we prepared? Even if there is racial bias, how do we prove it? Or are we in denial that it doesn't exist in workplace?

From the way I looked at the issue above, its probably a case of over-reacting on part of the workers , thinking race was the issue here. It's normal to be emotional when you have very high hope on achieving something but failing in the end

It's quite similar with the recent no-Malay-NMP issue when it started appearing in Malay newspaper sometime back. The statistics had proven that there were years when we had no Malay NMP. Nobody lifted a finger then. I know we do have leaders or capable people in the Malay society but if they refused to be nominated as an NMP, can we blame the system?

Back to the title of my post . 'Racial issues at workplace..or Was it?' Have you had such an experience?