By Ramesh Subbaraman
With changes in labour laws as well as the upcoming Industrial Relations Act, the Labour Movement will be able to bring more Professionals, Managers and Executives (PMEs) into its fold.
This was shared by NTUC Assistant Secretary-General Cham Hui Fong at a news conference on 15 January 2015 which outlined the Labour Movement’s priorities for year.
According to ASG Cham, the upcoming amendments to the IR Act will extend full collective bargaining powers to rank-and-file unions for eligible PMEs.
In last year alone, 21% of collective agreements signed between unions and employers already covered professional and junior management positions.
Protecting PMEs
Ms Cham shared that the Labour Movement can potentially reach out to another 100,000 PMEs within the unionised companies, and more than 600,000 PMEs currently in the workforce.
For those PMEs on limited representation, the scope of coverage has been expanded to a fifth area – re-employment. This is on top of its current scope of breach of individual contract of employment, retrenchment benefits, unfair dismissal and victimisation.
Productivity Matters
ASG Cham emphasised that the Labour Movement is concerned over the trend of negative productivity growth, and this could lead to wage stagnation.
To ensure that workers continue to receive wage increases, the Labour Movement stressed that productivity must improve, and more needs to be done in this area.
In 2015, NTUC will renew its call to tripartite partners to strengthen alignment and work together to raise productivity and income growth. One of the ways will be to look at productivity at the sectorial level.
Taking Stock
Looking back at 2014, ASG Cham explained that workers in the unionised companies continued to enjoy relatively healthy wage increases at about 4.1% due to collective bargaining and the strong adoption of the National Wages Council (NWC) guidelines.
Unionised companies also paid an average of 3 months bonus in 2014, compared to 3.16 months a year ago. This included the 13th month bonus.
“For 2015, the manpower crunch will help put pressure on companies to pay higher wages to retain and attract workers. However, this should be matched with a corresponding improvement in productivity to ensure wage increases are sustainable in the long run,” said ASG Cham.
Source: NTUC This Week
