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“Every Worker matters – Towards a Strong, United Singapore”
Data from the Ministry of Manpower indicated that our labour force, also known as the economically active population, was 67.7 per cent in 2018 and 2017. Given the changes that have been made to our manpower policies and resources given, perhaps it is timely that the Ministry conducts a deeper study and review of the data and study ways to increase the labour force. If more Singaporeans are gainfully employed, we will also be able to reduce the corresponding resources needed from the Government and channel it for other uses. Simplistically, one more Singaporean worker joining the workforce equals to the same Singaporean depending lesser on Government’s resources.
Retirement and Re-employment Age
It is heartening that this year’s Budget will provide more support towards the older workers with increased annual payouts from the Workfare Income Supplement scheme, by topping up the Special Employment Credit to support employers in hiring older workers, and other initiatives that will help them save more for retirement. While these are helpful to older workers, the best support is ensuring that they have a good job.
Many of the older workers have told us they are not ready to retire for good. Some need to continue working, as they are sole breadwinners of their families. Some need to support their children’s education in universities and others hope to build up the family’s medical and retirement funds which at 67 years old, many of them still felt was inadequate.
But most importantly, many of them expressed the fact that they are still physically able, relatively healthy and want to continue to be gainfully employed.
One area to look at is to help our older workers to continue working for as long as they wish to, and are able to. One way to do this is to raise the Retirement age from 62 years to 65 years and re-employment age from 67 years to 70 years.
Let’s do more to help them. In fact, there are already more than 20 unionised companies who are at the forefront of this. Examples of such progressive companies are Comfort Delgro, Gardens by the Bay, Hewlett Packard Singapore among others. These companies have chosen to move the retirement age to 65 years and beyond with some of them having no contractual retirement age. From time to time, the Labour Movement also receives appeals from workers seeking assistance to extend their reemployment contracts. And I urge the civil service and other government-linked companies to quickly take the lead.
As the Special Employment Credit is further extended to end 2020, it is perhaps timely to raise re-employment age so that both workers and employers can benefit. The extension of retirement and re-employment age provides certainty to workers who want to continue working, and allows a longer runway for employers to plan for training and upskilling, as well as adapt to digital transformation holistically.
Skills upgrading, training and re-training – Singapore, A Smart Nation
No worker should be left behind on our road to the development of a Smart Nation for Singapore. As such, I urge the Ministry of Education to look into enabling continual education for our matured workers. Currently, companies are engaging Institutes of Higher Learning to develop programs for their workers. This approach only reaches out to a small number of workers. If the Ministry of Education could step in, it can be scaled up exponentially.
It has been particularly challenging training workers in the SME sector. A large number of Singaporeans work for SMEs. Due to their workforce size, many SME companies are often unable to send workers for training due to shortage of staff. At the same time, the other challenge is that SME workers are reluctant to go for training as it might affect their gross income and overtime.
We have also heard feedback from workers in their mid-fifties who feel that it is not necessary to go for training as their career runway is shorter and training might not provide more opportunities for career advancement. We need to change their mindset and help educate them that training and skills upgrading are necessary for them to remain relevant. In view of digital transformation and ageing workforce, ensuring that both SMEs and their workers are pro-training is especially important.
Hence, I urge the Government to recognise companies who are willing to send workers for training and willing to upgrade and automate job processes, to positively differentiate them by allowing them to easily tap on Government funding versus companies who do not do so.
To facilitate and accelerate training, I hope that training can be brought nearer to the doorsteps of companies and their workers, especially for companies that are situated at industrial areas. This will help to reduce travelling time for workers when attending training. For the more enlightened employers who grant workers paid time-off to upskill, government could provide further subsidies to companies in the form of grants or outright absentee payroll.
Singapore as a Smart Nation will position us well in the competitive global economy and hence, we need to push everyone to step up the pace of industry transformation and push for productivity growth through automation and developing a skilled workforce. If our workers are all gainfully employed, it will benefit employers, the Government and the nation overall as Every Worker Matters.
I move in support of this Budget
Thank You
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