Resurfaced clip of Anthony Bourdain sparks debate about treatment of ‘maids’ in Singapore

A resurfaced clip of Anthony Bourdain on a trip to Singapore has sparked a debate on social media about the treatment of foreign domestic workers.

The footage, which has gone viral on Twitter, was first released in 2018 during an episode of the late celebrity chef’s food and travel show, Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. In the clip, Bourdain could be seen eating with three locals in Singapore and talking about how many people in the country have maids.

“Everybody’s got a maid, looking after their child at home,” one woman said. “So maids are kind of like the opiate of the masses.”

In response, Bourdain said that if someone has a maid, it then “frees them up to join the workforce”, which the woman agreed with. However, she also noted the downsides of having a maid, as she claimed that her husband didn’t “know how to serve himself water”.

As she went on to explain that her husband also couldn’t do his own laundry, one of the men in the group asked Bourdain when the last time was that he did laundry. In response, the chef expressed how much he liked doing the chore.

“I enjoy throwing my clothes into the washer and removing them to the dryer,” Bourdain said. “It’s a process that makes you feel very satisfied with yourself.”

He went on to make a joke about the people in the country being too reliant on domestic service workers.

“It’s like bourgeois, man. You’re living off the labour of a repressed underclass,” he joked, prompting some laughter from the people at the table.

As of 27 September, the clip has more than 4.5 million views, with Twitter users in the comments applauding Bourdain for mocking his peers’ reliance on domestic help.

“No one can call people out right to their faces quite like Anthony Bourdain,” one person wrote.

“I dunno man, Bourdain was still speaking facts,” another added. “I’m from the Philippines, and even though I don’t have any family members who work as househelp in SG, I know full well about the conditions of my countrymen there and he was pretty upfront about it.”

Someone else praised Bourdain for calling the Singapore locals out for “humble-bragging” about having maids.

In one response, a Twitter user shared screenshots from a Singapore-based aid agency’s website, which describes domestic service workers based on their race.

“Government-accredited placement agency invites you to select a race of servants!” the tweet reads. “Look out for ‘prideful’ Filipinos. Consider the ‘innate characteristics’ of the ‘submissive’ Indonesians, or the Mizoram who have ‘more endurance than the other races.’”

In addition to describing foreign domestic workers by their alleged personalities, the site also lists the different rates workers can be paid based on their nationalities, such as $550-$700 for Indonesians and $450-$570 for a maid who is Mizoram, a “race found in Myanmar and India”.

In response to the Twitter post, multiple people criticised the agency and the country’s view and treatment of foreign domestic workers. “I can’t believe what I’m reading here,” one person wrote.

Recent research has continued to reveal the value of the domestic service industry in Singapore. According to a 2019 report done by Experian, a multinational consumer reporting company, migrant domestic workers (MDW) contributed SGD$11.1 billion in 2018, which is equivalent to 2.4 per cent of Singapore’s GDP.

As noted on the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), a Singapore Government agency website, employer’s guidelines for MDWs include rest days, contracts and safety agreements, and guidelines to their salary.

However, as noted by the MOM, domestic workers are not included in The Employment Act, which is Singapore’s main law that regulates hourly, daily, and monthly pay. This act “provides for the basic terms and conditions at work for employees” and covers workers who are full-time, part-time, contract, and hired temporarily. In addition to foreign dosmestic workers, seafarers and statutory board employeee or civil servants are not covered by the act.