Rest is a Luxury We Must Aim to Afford
The colourful crowd at Labour Day Rally 2023. This year, will you join us to fight for the right to rest? Photograph by Bernice Wong.
Dear Reader,
When was the last time you managed to rest—to stop and recuperate from your day jobs? To step away from the endless grind of your work?
As workers of this sunny island, we have some of the longest work hours in the world, and are one of the most sleep-deprived countries globally. Bosses can expect us to reply to work texts late at night, to cover extra shifts because they’re “under-staffed”, and to work from home even when we are sick. Sleep is one of the most fundamental needs, and yet our rest has been taken from us.
From doctors to domestic workers, from students to stay-at-home caregivers, most of us are pushing ourselves to survive in a culture that asks so much of us and makes us feel like we can never be good enough. We are all entrenched in this culture of overwork, one that damages our bodies, our minds, our relationships, and steals our lives from us. For some like Zaia, one of this year’s speakers at the Labour Day Rally 2024, this exhaustion is real. Imagine working 12 to 15-hour work days for 6 days a week and yet barely being able to keep afloat physically and financially. White-collar workers too have to bring their work home and work past office hours or bring along their work laptops while on leave. Junior doctors experience some of the longest working hours, often working up to 30 hours at a go.
Reclaiming our right to rest is one of the most powerful ways of affirming our dignity as people. Photograph by Bernice Wong.
On 1st May, we’ll be having our annual Labour Day rally at Hong Lim Park to claim better protections for all workers in Singapore. Come and hear how workers, parents and students in Singapore are fighting for their safety, their health, their families and their futures, and join in the fight. Learn about the victories that ordinary people in Singapore’s history have won for all of us, when they come together to rally.
A different future is possible, but only if we fight for it. Will you fight with us, this Labour Day?
With love and solidarity,
Dexter and Kumarr,
On behalf of Workers Make Possible
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Kumarr is one of 17 contributors to We Are Not the Enemy: The Practice of Advocacy in Singapore, edited by Constance Singam and Margaret Thomas.
Straits Times journalist Clement Yong calls it “seminal” in how “it rather calmly provides a platform for some of the best known names of civil society to share their experiences, in the process reaching out to those who are curious but who may yet be reluctant to lend explicit support or show up at meetings.”
