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Emerging Stronger Together
Mr Deputy Speaker Thank you for allowing me to join this Debate.
The impact of COVID-19 on the world and Singapore has been tremendous. While, we in Singapore have kept fatalities to a minimum. The devastating effect of the pandemic on the economy and on our livelihoods is obvious. In order to buffer the impact, the government wrote up five Budgets last year, and spent close to $100 billion to help businesses cut costs, and to help workers save jobs. If not for that decisive and massive action, the GDP drop last year would not be the -5.4%, it will be something more like -12.4%. It's not just a percentage points – that will convert into jobs lost, families impacted. So I think it is important for us to recognise what that massive action has helped stave off in terms of suffering for fellow Singaporeans.
For 2021, whilst we must continue to look after our jobs and our businesses and contain the negative impact of the pandemic, we cannot just do that. We must at the same time, look at how to get back on track for the future. And this is the theme of this year's Budget, Emerging Stronger Together. Emerging Stronger Together is not a slogan. It is not a nice to have. It is crucial. Why, let me break it down into why it's important to emerge stronger, and why it's important to emerge together.
Emerging Stronger
First, why is it necessary to be much stronger. You see, the $100 billion from our reserves, once it's spent, it's spent. And we all know that we cannot count on an endless $100 billion, never mind what size of our reserves, but we would not have an endless $100 billion to keep on spending time after time to block pain. And we must also assume that there will be future downturns that will come our way. In what way, in what form, what triggers it, we do not know but come, they will one day. Therefore, we have to find sustainable ways to replenish our national kitty. Our reserves is like the airbag in our car – you used it, we have to refill it. Otherwise, the next accident, we may not survive so well.
Second, the global low interest rate environment is likely to persist for some time. Major economies will use fiscal and monetary policies to keep their economies going to avoid a recession, amid a tepid inflationary environment. Now, what this means is that the returns we can expect from investments are likely to stay low. And as we all know we already use a good proportion of our NIRC, to fund government expenditure. And if the outlook is so, then we cannot just plan on the basis that what we don't want to spend out of our reserves, should the need be that we will naturally get it from increased investment income. We cannot plan on the basis.
Third, whereas on the revenue and the money side, we have to be more careful. But the need for the Government to spend more in upgrading our infrastructure, as so many members explain in the different sectors, is clear. As always, the crucial need to continue investing in our people and in taking better care, especially of our aging local population and our workforce in an increasingly volatile environment. That need will only go up. And it is a reality that we cannot escape the structural. And to do that spending, we have to find the money somehow.
So these reasons and factors converge to make it imperative that we go back into maintaining a laser sharp focus on transforming our economy and to get growth going again. Otherwise, Singapore will be hard pressed to find or to create the resources that we need for that national journey ahead. That is why we must emerge stronger.
Emerging Together
Why must we emerge together? Well, as we seek ways to be much stronger we must also ensure that we do so together, and I can think of two reasons, at least.
First, we must plan on not leaving any group behind, as we emerge stronger. When we say the in the Labour Movement "every worker matters", that is the Labour Movement. For Singapore, every Singaporean matters. And this is key to our national social cohesion and stability.
Second, we must enlist the contribution from every group, and every segment, and every individual towards emerging stronger and staying resilient and self reliant, and the more we can do so, the more we will strengthen national resource creation and moderate the rise in government welfare expenditure, or the need to bring forth more taxation.
How to Emerge Stronger Together for the Senior Worker segment
Now how to emerge stronger together in the context of the senior worker? That will be the focus of my speech today, Mr Deputy Speaker. With regard to the senior workforce, I would like to propose five measures in order for us to emerge stronger together.
Continue to Save and Create Jobs
First, continue to save jobs and to create jobs. Sir, I thank the Government very much for the Job Support Scheme, the JSS the Jobs Growth Incentive, the JGI, the SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package, the enhanced Wage Credit Scheme, and the Senior Employment Credit Scheme. I name all these because sometimes they get lost, as we look at the overall Budget. But I just want everybody to remember that all these schemes were rolled out purposefully, in order to make a difference to the employment and employability of all our workers. Senior workers included. And they have given much breathing room to firms in 2020, and has helped thousands of workers keep jobs. And this has enabled the overall employment rate for our senior workers to remain stable. Last year, in fact for the age band 65 and above, the employment rate last year went up by 0.9 percentage points compared to 2019. And I therefore fully support the fine-tuned extension of these schemes in this year's Budget to continue to save jobs, and to lighten the load on firms.
At the same time, Mr Deputy Speaker, I must also point out that for the distressed sectors such as aerospace, aviation, retail, senior workers have experienced significant impact, through non-offers or non-renewals of re-employment contracts, as the firms downsized, and it would not be easy for such displaced senior workers to find new work.
I therefore urge more government support in order to step up specific Industry-focused efforts to help senior workers in these distressed sectors to keep their jobs. Or if not, then, to proactively be retrained and placed into jobs in other sectors and industries.
Press on with agreed timetable to raise statutory retirement and re-employment ages and CPF contributions
The Labour Movement caught for tripartite discussions on this subject in 2018. Government responded positively to our call, setup the Tripartite Workgroup on Older Workers, which then worked hard and reached consensus, and the consensus was to raise statutory retirement age from 62 to 65; the re-employment age ceiling from 67 to 70 progressively over the coming decade, starting with a new retirement age of 63 and a new re-employment age ceiling of 68 from July 2022. This schedule was first put in place by the tripartite partners to enhance the retirement and re-employment framework and to strengthen older workers' retirement adequacy, and to further promote progressive workplaces that value our older workers.
Many companies and organisations have proven that this can be done. NTUC, for example, we walk the talk, we as an employer ourselves, we have taken the lead and raised the organisational retirement age and re-employment age ceiling by one year from 1st January this year. And this was earlier announced. Our social enterprises will do so from first July this year, also earlier announced, and this is a year ahead of the national timeline. The public sector has done likewise civil service announced in 2019, that it will raise the retirement and re-employment ages of its officers, by a year to 63 and 68, respectively. In July this year. Again, a year ahead of the national schedule.
Outside NTUC, outside the public sector, when we look within the unionised sector, at the private sector employers, we have been encouraging and we have seen more than 100 employers in the unionised sector who have voluntarily either upped the retirement age within the company or increased the reemployment age within the companies, or both. And this number, compared to the number that we saw in 2019, it basically doubled. And it covers companies across different sectors. We have companies who are in the attractions area, hotels, food manufacturing, childcare, and many other sectors. So, it is fairly broad-based.
To help workers enhance their retirement adequacy we also called for sustainable increases in CPF contributions for older workers over the years. Unfortunately last year COVID-19 disrupted our whole economy, forcing the planned CPF enhancements to be deferred by a year to first January 2022. And the Labour Movement deliberated hard, but we supported that deferment, because we understood that in the depth of the pandemic, in the depth of that disruption, the most important thing is employment. So we don't want our older workers to be put at unnecessary greater risk of losing their jobs.
Yet, Mr Deputy Speaker, while we do that. I want to remind this house and everyone out there that we must be careful to keep pace with our original intent and purpose of helping older workers enhance their retirement adequacy, given our longer lifespans, on average. This was the purpose for that workgroup, for my calling for it in 2018, for the consensus that was developed for that agreement. It wasn't done haphazardly. It was for a strategic purpose in order to secure our national objectives and to make sure that as many of our older workers would have better retirement adequacy which is a point that is shared by both sides of the house. Therefore, we must be careful not to kick the can down the road further, because if we negatively impact on retirement adequacy, that will come back to bite us earlier and harder.
I am therefore calling for the planned raising of the statutory retirement and re-employment ages in July, 2022, as well as the agreed deferred improvements to the CPF contributions, now due in January 2022 to be proceeded with, without further delay. At the same time, I also urged Government to help employers defray the cost of the enhanced CPF contributions through the CPF transition offset, which was also within the plan prior to that deferment.
Strengthen adoption of Flexible Work Arrangements
Three, strengthen adoption of flexible work arrangements. In Budget 2019, I pointed out that if we can implement flexible work arrangements more systematically and pervasively, we will be able to retain significantly more local workers and allow more middle-aged workers to undertake caregiving without having to quit work, and then to be able to return to work post caregiving. I was very pleased that Mr Melvin Yong has made specific arrangements within his Radin Mas Constituency in order to bring this forward. And it's important that we do so, because it would be a pity if workers have to choose between work and family, just because companies do not offer enough flexible work options.
Here, COVID-19 has done something good. It has forced employers to reassess how work can be done in non-traditional ways. In other words, not necessarily at the workplace, not necessarily full time. Certain roles can be done from home, at least a good part of the time or part-time work might be actually doable in combination, or to implement, for example, staggered starting times. So the way in which you can maximise the use of your manpower and tap manpower sources can be a lot more flexible and i think COVID-19 has opened the eyes of both employers as well as workers to that possibility, and both have learned and have adapted. We must build on this insight and make further gains and not just lapse back into the status quo and go back into the same ol' same ol' of, must be here at the workplace and must be full time.
I therefore urge Government to strongly support the more pervasive adoption of flexible work arrangements. And this can significantly improve employment outcomes for senior workers, for the middle-aged older workers who might have otherwise had to leave work in order to look after older family members, and then cannot come back.
Strengthen Skills-Building for Senior Workers
Four, strengthen skills-building for senior workers. When COVID-19 struck, businesses started to pivot more to technology, and individuals, also had to quickly pick up new skills in order to be able to cope well within that new situation. So nowadays using our smartphones, our laptops, our tablets, for example, to order food or scan QR codes for services, to conduct meetings online, leverage e-commerce platforms, have now become very normal, second nature to businesses, and many individuals. Senior workers had to adapt, and many did.
So what has this taught both employers and our senior workers? That lifelong learning for lifelong employability is completely achievable – can be done, has been done. COVID-19 forced us, a lot more amongst us have done so. Therefore once again just like my call on their flexible work arrangement insights, not to go to waste. We must also not let the progress achieved through this painful adaptation during the pandemic, with regard to picking up new skills, using new technology, must not let that be wasted and must not allow old mindsets and prejudices, to allow old practices to return that will only stymie us. Otherwise, in this fast-changing business model and technology, we can only expect even more, and faster displacement of our senior workers. And then that will eventually lead to all those negative scenarios that we really dread and want to avoid. Chief among which would be retirement inadequacy.
To do so, there must be specific mechanisms within industries and workplaces to operationalise the intent. Here, what do I mean, it means that it is not only about policy, policy's important, it is not only about funding, funding is important, but it is about, then, who is supposed to get together with whom in the company to discuss what is needed, who is supposed to be sent for what, and then to execute that. Only that action will give us the results that we need.
I therefore urge further integration between the job skills ladders of the Industry Transformation Maps or ITMs, and the work of our Company Training Committees, or CTCs, including the sectorial versions. The CTCs are equipped to help companies undertake Operations Technology Skills Roadmapping. And I think we should do more in order to resource them so that they can propagate even faster. They can then be our machinery to ensure that purposeful skills-building takes place in the economy. And that workers of all ages, and here I have a particular emphasis on senior workers, for reasons I think it's quite obvious to us all that they are vulnerable to being left out. And therefore we must not let it happen and CTC will be the machinery, where we can better ensure that they are not forgotten but that they are included, and they are part of this progress.
Strengthen Health of Senior Workers
Five, strengthen the health of senior workers. For many years now, workplace health has focused on wellness and chronic disease management -- diabetes, high blood pressure, and the like. All this remains valid. At the same time, COVID-19 has taught us something else, that actually we cannot say that we are not vulnerable to infectious diseases. And depending on what we are talking about, these diseases can indeed pose a very severe threat to individuals, to corporates, even to our whole economy and society. And where such infectious diseases can be prevented or be better managed with vaccination, then, I think that it must be to the advantage of workers, the firms and the state to assess which are the most cost effective science-based ones to vaccinate against.
The Ministry of Health established what is called the National Adult Immunisation schedule or NAIS in November 2017, now that is pre-COVID, in order to provide guidance on vaccinations that persons aged 18 years or older should adopt to protect themselves against vaccine-preventable diseases. In the light of the COVID-19 experience, I think the usefulness of this schedule has become even more salient.
I therefore urge Government and the tripartite partners to work together to see how best to leverage science-based cost effective vaccination to enhance business resilience and senior worker health. This will also help forestall the potential discrimination against senior workers' employment or employability on account of real or perceived higher risks of infection, and the impact that might have on company operations.
Conclusion
Mr Deputy Speaker, in conclusion, if COVID-19 has taught us anything, it is that the perceived barriers to employing older workers can be overcome, and that older workers have once again proven their value and their adaptability.
The Labour Movement will continue to do our utmost to work with tripartite partners and senior workers to enhance their employment and employability. We must also ensure that the right HR practices are in place to tap the potential of our senior workers, and to recognise their contribution. Because every worker matters. Our older workers matter. And this is what emerging stronger together really means for our senior workers.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I support the Budget. Thank you.
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