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Introduction
Mr Speaker, our Labour MPs and I bring to Parliament with us today the challenges, dreams and hopes of our hardworking, dedicated Singaporean workers, many who have charted rewarding careers by dedicating themselves to their crafts and trades; many who have shouldered resolutely, the weight of their work responsibilities with the gravity of their familial caregiving duties; and even so, the rising class of gig and platform workers, who are bravely charting new work norms and pushing boundaries on fair treatment and safety nets for retirement and workplace injuries.
As our workforce ages and the aspirations of our workers changes, our Worker’s Compact – our social, economic contract with our workers – must be renewed such that working towards better wages, welfare and work prospects continue to be a collective goal for workers, employers and the Government. In this respect, the NTUC concluded a year-long conversation with our workers, 42,000 workers to be precise, to understand the dreams and challenges of our workers in modern-day Singapore.
Leveraging Flexible Work Arrangements to Meet Employees’ and Employers’ Needs
In our Conversations, balancing caregiving duties with work responsibilities, has become top of mind for our workers. In a Singapore that is aging rapidly with smaller family nucleus, more workers are now caring for their senior loved ones, young children, and infirmed family members. The going can get quite tough for our workers, many of whom are new generation two-shift workers. After a hard day’s work, they go home, to immediately start on their second caregiving shifts at home. And it is groundhog day for as long as their loved ones need care.
Our Labour Movement knows the importance of building up a strong ecosystem to empower and equip our working caregivers to stay in their jobs. In 1977, the NTUC set up its first childcare centre, which would eventually become MyFirstSkool, an island-wide network of kindergartens and childcare centres that facilitates mothers returning to work with a peace of mind. Since 2012, our Labour Movement had advocated better workplace conditions for nursing mothers under Project Liquid Gold. We have called for Family Care and Eldercare leave to be made mandatory since 2013, with one of the first calls being made by none other than Madam Halimah Yacob herself. Recently, I also made a call to employers to extend family care leave to include caring for aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces and.
And yet even with all of these, we recognise that Flexible Work Arrangements would be a critical pillar in this ecosystem of support for our caregivers. In a recent NTUC U Women and Family-PAP Women’s Wing survey of some 3,000 working caregivers, close to 90 per cent said that FWAs would be a very important factor for them to choose to stay or return to the workplace. Indeed, the Unions have been advocating for FWAs since 1995, when we introduced FWAs in our collective agreement negotiations. With over 12,000 companies being signatories to the 2017 Tripartite Standards for Flexible Work Arrangements, and the tailwinds afforded by COVID-19, the time is now to make FWAs a workplace norm.
At the heart of successful FWAs, a culture of trust must be created in the workplace. Workers must be responsible in the use and request of FWAs and be accountable for work outcomes as agreed with employers. Employers must create a culture sustainable for FWAs, redesigning their jobs for flexi-load, flexi-time, and flexi-place, and reengineering their organisations and management to embrace FWAs. I believe employers see FWAs as a tenable sustainable way to retain and attract talent, but some of our SMEs may find it challenging to implement this on the ground in a productive manner.
For employers, FWAs must lead to productivity gains. The NTUC, together with its partners like the IHRP, have started on this process of equipping and enabling our more progressive companies. Unionised companies keen to use FWAs for talent management and productivity have strategised and reorganised themselves through the Company Training Committees and facilitated road-mapping exercises with the NTUC. One such company is Chye Thiam Maintenance (CTM), which is unionised under our Building Construction and Timber Industries Employees' Union. CTM piloted with the NTUC’s Women & Family Unit, the C U Back at Work Programme, and this is aimed at attracting women caregivers to return to the workplace. Using a mix of a paid pre-employment training programme with flex time/flex place work arrangements, the programme has since attracted some 800 women returners into its prospective pipeline. This success did not come easy, as the company had to re-engineer its HR processes, and is now embarking on a digital scheduling project.
In order to make FWAs a workplace norm, we must equip our companies with the necessary resources and expertise in executing this to win-win employer-worker outcomes. This means availing organisational excellence tools and consulting expertise to our SMEs. This means providing our SMEs with plug-and-play technology software for managing flexi-time and flexi-place schedules. This means facilitating SMEs with training programmes, to upskill their workers and their potential pipeline of workers. I call on the Government, to consider FWAs as a critical workplace priority and to invest more resources to guide and equip our companies on its rollout.
Caring for Vulnerable Workers
Mr Speaker, I would now like to touch on another important refresh in our new Workers Compact – that of protecting and caring for our vulnerable workers. Many of our workers have chosen gig work and a shared economy as it affords them the gift of flexibility, and there is a certain romantism in being able to have full control of your work-life… but is this really true? Unlike the self-employed workers or towkays from yesteryears – most who run sole-proprietorships, control their charge rates, their opening and closing hours, the majority of our platform workers today – private hire drivers, our delivery riders, by virtue of the fact that they depend on a shared platform with set rules and business guidelines for their livelihoods, are often subject to management controls by these platforms. While we argue that our drivers and riders can choose to move on to another platform if one fails them, the fact of the matter is that all platforms have their own set of rules and business priorities, which our platform workers need to adhere to.
Over the weekend I had a lo-hei and kopi chat with some of our delivery riders in Punggol. Our riders shared with me that due to the way that some platforms structure their incentives (which directly affects their livelihoods), many riders end up having to work seven days in a week. This is to achieve their incentive levels and not to “lose” the levels they have already achieved. Some expressed their angst on what they call “glitches” in their platform apps, where they don’t get as many job orders as they get nearer to their incentives goals or are assigned jobs that are far away when there are actually delivery riders nearby.
I also learnt that our riders are penalised if they are late to report to their shifts (yes, by the way, most platforms organise their riders by shift timings and our riders have to vie for the shift timings they want) – and they tell me that they can be fined, even if they are late by mere seconds. One rider shared that he was fined for being 2 minutes late. Mr Speaker, in the hustle and bustle of our everyday lives, even I find myself, at times, sliding into meetings one to two minutes late. I can’t even fathom how stressful this is to our riders, battling traffic and road conditions, and areas with poor signals.
I recall meeting Mr K (not his real name), a food delivery rider, several times over the past 3 years. Mr K has late-stage cancer, but together with his family, have decided that he would continue to work for as long as he can as a delivery rider. Over the years, he has shown me how worried he is about his healthcare and retirement expenditures, and his family has reached out to me to find out more about CPF top ups, and the CPF Matched Retirement Savings Scheme. Lately Mr K ran into an issue with his platform partner. He had missed a message from the platform relaying that they had moved earlier the last date of collection for the vouchers he had rightfully earned as part of his incentives. It was $250 in vouchers, and even with several appeals, and appeals from the Delivery Association and explanations of his medical condition, the platform refused to budge on their decision to not give him the vouchers. In the end, we assisted Mr K financially locally from the community.
As more Singaporeans choose to be in the shared economy, and as more platform companies take root in Singapore and evolve their business models, our platform workers, their rights as workers, and their grievances and aspirations must be represented in better, more impactful ways. The Advisory Committee on Platform Workers has recommended the need to set workplace injury and retirement safety nets for our workers, many who are vulnerable like Mr K. I call for additional protections and representation for our workers in the areas of earnings, benefits, and welfare. More transparency must be given by the platforms. For Platform Workers wishing to transit out of platform work, we must also prep for their long-term career resilience with upskilling. I call for more accessibility to upskilling courses for our platform workers and livelihood support while they are undergoing training.
Supporting Essential Trades and Skilled Tradesmen
Mr Speaker, I will now touch on a very resilient group of workers who have kept our nation going, despite sometimes taken for granted by the public eye. I am referring to our skilled tradesmen in professions like plumbing, electric work, air-conditioning servicing and mechanical repairs. Our skilled tradesmen and women have forged fulfilling careers over the years, but as Singapore transforms itself economically over the years, these taken-for-granted but essential trades are at risk of a diminishing Singaporean worker base. We must continue to make these trades viable and exciting with visible and attainable career pathways to attract new talent.
My work at the NTUC has allowed me to engage with our Trade Guilds and Societies and these engagements have yielded pragmatic insights into the matter. Given that master tradesmen are forged from a blend of strong foundations in theory and practical unique ground experiences, it makes sense that we strengthen and put into foreground, our apprenticeship programmes once again. Guilds and Unions are good grounds for finding master tradesmen and coupled with training programmes and institutions, apprenticeship programmes will allow for clear career pathways to be articulated and good livelihoods to be build. A Career Progression Model! Besides youth workers, this has also good potential to be a second spring for our mid-careerists looking for a change in profession.
The Singapore Plumbing Society recognised this and with NTUC’s facilitation, completed a road mapping exercise earlier to structure training and career pathways for new members into the trade. We have seen some good, early successes of attracting younger plumbers into this sector, many who have gone on to become their own bosses in the plumbing world. I call on the Government to support our skilled trades and crafts by partnering with our Guilds and Unions in making skilled trades an exciting career choice once again for our youths and mid-careerists. More training funding support through the SkillsFuture mechanism can be availed to individuals embarking on apprenticeship programmes.
Conclusion
Mr Speaker, NTUC Cares for our workers and we will continue to work with our Tripartite Partners to support our workers and the Budget with impactful and innovative programmes. #EveryWorkerMatters, and with that, I support the Budget. Thank you.
