Ken Howard, president of the screen actors group, described the result, in which 93 percent of those voting favored the accord, as "a huge boon for members" at a time when the film and television industries are experiencing a sharp retrenchment.
With other sectors, like business investment, slowing, a sharp retrenchment by consumers could tip the economy into recession.
Last November, foreseeing intensifying losses, the airline announced a sharp retrenchment, killing plans for 10 new airplanes each year and modestly cutting capacity on existing service.
In a post on his blog, Tan Chuan-Jin, the acting minister for manpower, said: "To shrink our foreign workforce altogether will also be quite dire as many of our companies may close, relocate and with that a sharp rise in retrenchments and possibly higher unemployment amongst Singaporeans".
Another is whether the economy will be able to deal with such a sharp fiscal retrenchment.
The revised second-quarter growth data came after a week that showed that the economic retrenchment that began in the second quarter had spilled into the summer, with a sharp slowdown in new-home sales and a drop in sales of factory goods.
Booms in lending and property prices were followed by sharp retrenchments and bank failures.
Those sharp retrenchments are based on global oil prices of $65 a barrel, $7 higher more than the going rate Wednesday.
This will force a retrenchment on the part of consumers and lead to the postponement of many investment decisions.Significantly weaker external demand will result in a sharp contraction in export volumes in 2009 for the first time since 1996.
A sharp economic slowdown in America?
