After nine months of discussions and negotiations that first began in October 2017 and mediated by MOH Holdings, healthcare workers can now enjoy some of the same welfare benefits across Singapore’s public healthcare institutions.
This comes after a milestone memorandum of understanding was signed between the Healthcare Services Employees’ Union (HSEU) and the three public healthcare clusters – National Healthcare Group (NHG), National University Health System (NUHS) and Singapore Health Services (SingHealth) – on 27 June 2018 at Parliament House.
With the agreement, the union and cluster management partners have agreed to enhance, and align certain core benefits for workers across the three public healthcare clusters. However, there will still be individual CA signings between HSEU and the individual clusters to cover differentiated and unique benefits.
“We had to try to find commonality and try to get the best for our workers. We worked very hard for this since October 2017 and eventually fulfilled this dream. But this is only half the journey as we continue to work towards harmonising the benefits for our healthcare workers,” said HSEU President K. Thanaletchimi.
HSEU added that there has been an overall enhancement to staff benefits as it made efforts to ensure that workers will not be worse-off from the alignment.
Key Improvements
Central amongst the core benefits is the revised Medical Benefits Scheme. This will allow staff who have not fully utilised their medical claims to have up to $100 of any unused balance credited into their CPF Medisave Accounts at the end of each calendar year. This scheme is portable across the public healthcare institutions.
Miss Thanaletchimi added that the terms agreed are very targeted, staff centric and future orientated so that workers have the assurance that their health will be taken care of.
Enhancements to other benefits also include improvements in marriage leave days, as well as compassionate and family care leave that has been expanded to include grandparents and grandparents-in-law.
HSEU also managed to secure commitment from its management partners to collectively support career development and progressive wages for workers. They will also work together to identify jobs at risk, and further develop the skills and training of workers to prepare them for future changes.
“The harmonisation of terms is the first step where clusters come together. This is an enabler for us to look forward into the future and build a future-ready workforce,” said MOH Holdings Director for HR and Talent Development Derek Tan.
