By Ramesh Subbaraman
Launched by NTUC Deputy Secretary-General (DSG) Heng Chee How on 8 August 2016 at a U Live Roadshow at Raffles Place during lunchtime, the 22-page ‘Understanding Re-employment’ guidebook aims to help union leaders, employers and workers get a clearer idea on the re-employment of older employees.
The guidebook is an initiative of NTUC U Live, the Labour Movement’s platform to reach out to active agers 55 years and above. Reaching Out
On 8 April this year, the Government announced that the re-employment age will be raised from 65 to 67 years old with effect from 1 July 2017.
Reaching Out
Since the release of the revised re-employment guidelines, U Live has been stepping up its efforts to reach out to the Labour Movement’s network of 62 NTUC-affiliated unions and associations.
The aim’s to encourage early adoption of the guidelines among unionised companies.
Through various programmes and efforts such as WorkPro, U Live has urged and supported the management and HR personnel of various unionised companies to adopt the guidelines earlier.
And these efforts seem to be paying off. There has been a significant increase in the number of unionised companies re-employing workers beyond the age of 65.
According to NTUC, as of July this year, 1,016 unionised companies surveyed by U Live were re-employing beyond the age of 65, nearly double the figure a year ago.
Of this, 183 companies have a basic written policy to re-employ up to the age of 67.
A year ago, the number of unionised companies re-employing beyond the age of 65 was at 585.
DSG Heng emphasised that addressing the issue of an ageing population was a whole of country movement. His message to employers – maturity is an advantage.
“We have a small workforce in Singapore and companies are already saying that if they want to expand, it is not easy to find experienced manpower and elsewhere in other countries they have found that they are losing mature workers to early retirement.
“So here is great value within our older workers, they should be recognised for it, treasured for it,” said DSG Heng.
Source: NTUC This Week
