It's nice that 80% say they're willing to pay more if it means the workers get paid more, but the way we keep asking this question—"would you pay more?"—is a demonstration of how often we focus on "pragmatic" policy tweaks rather than fundamental principles and rights. 
According to the survey, the majority of the top essential jobs identified are also jobs that are paid some of the lowest wages, with very little labour protection. Some of these jobs are also socially stigmatised as low-skilled or dangerous.
400,000 out of 1.37 million Singaporean households (about 30%) have been identified via government help schemes as lower-income. How many of them contain essential workers? straitstimes.com/singapore/4000…
Then there are the 1 million work permit holders. Many of them are essential, too—I notice "domestic worker" doesn't appear in the poll, but over 260,000 of them are in our homes, cooking, cleaning, and caregiving throughout #COVID19.
Many migrant workers have been classified as essential workers too. But #Singapore also needs thousands of construction workers to get back to the work 'cos the malls, hotels, schools, hospitals, public transport infrastructure, etc. they build are essential to us & our economy.
That the workers who are so important to us are paid so little, have limited labour rights and protections, and are often subjected to living and work conditions that we ourselves wouldn't accept, is *injustice*. It's not a bug that we can choose to fix, or not.
Asking "are Singaporeans willing to pay more?" frames the issue as a matter of choice for the privileged. It positions the urgent matter of improving the conditions of the working class as a question of whether other people are willing to be inconvenienced.
(Side-note, but an important one)
It's also a question that presents the entire situation as a zero sum game: low-wage workers will only have improved conditions at our (the consumers') expense. But this is not necessarily the case: academia.sg/academic-views…
It's also a question that presents the entire situation as a zero sum game: low-wage workers will only have improved conditions at our (the consumers') expense. But this is not necessarily the case: academia.sg/academic-views…
If we were a society more familiar with more fundamental discussions of values, principles, politics, and rights, we would see how superficial, elitist, and classist the question "would you pay more?" is.
The actual question here is: Are we a society that is okay with there being an underclass of people—local and foreign—whose labour is inadequately compensated (in relation to local cost and standard of living), and who have consistently been marginalised?
If the answer is "no", then there is no need to ask "would you pay more?" because if we are *not* okay with being that sort of society, then it naturally follows that things need to change and this injustice needs to be addressed.
"Would you pay more" suggests a possibly that our answer, as a society, to that more fundamental question might be "yes, we're okay with that."
argh, should be "possibility"
