LM Budget 2016 Wishlist

With 2016 now in full force, the Labour Movement is looking hard at how it can help workers prepare for the future ahead. Here are our four recommendations for the upcoming Budget: Strengthen The Singaporean Core; Improve Productivity; Enhance Training And Skills Upgrading; and Improve Retirement Adequacy.

1. Strengthen the Singaporean Core

Young workers/future workers/professionals, managers and executives (PMEs)

• Implement an integrated career counselling system in schools to help prepare students for the future.
• Review the Employment Pass criteria. Enforcement should be tightened on companies that have not shown much or any commitment towards building a Singaporean core.

Mature workers

• Regular reviews of the re-employment age should take place to make it easier for workers to work longer if they wish to.
• Ensure mature workers have access to continuous learning, employment and re-employment opportunities.

Self-employed/contract workers

• Examine the Employment Act to see how “contract for service” workers can be protected.
• Do more to ensure self-employed workers have CPF contributions and hence the necessary medical and retirement resource support.
• Set a limit to short-term contract extensions such that the employer is obliged to provide permanent employment after a number of extensions.
• Outlaw unfair practices such as one-day breaks between contracts, whereby service benefits will not be owed to employees.

Low-wage workers

• Channel workers to better jobs with better pay. Jobs can be redesigned and companies incentivised to adopt best of class practices.
• Regularly review the Workfare Income Supplement (WIS) since incomes have changed over time.
• Make annual increments and annual wage supplement compulsory for low-wage workers

2. Improve Productivity

• Government to take the lead for best-sourcing initiatives, like allowing variation of contracts midway through tenure should there be alternative methods that are more productive.
• Committees which have Sectoral Manpower Plans to set benchmarks and have plans on how to upgrade existing jobs.
• The Labour Movement to initiate productivity-led solutions with small and medium enterprises (SMEs) through the Singapore National Employers Federation, with the intent of improving workers’ wages. A current initiative in place is Ministry of Manpower’s Lean Enterprise Development Scheme, which the Labour Movement supports.
• Harmonise existing schemes by creating a cross-agency one-stop application process for workers to easily access training courses.
• Review foreign manpower productivity and retain or allow in only the most productive and skilful workers.

3. Enhance Training and Skills Upgrading

• Maintain support for workers in lifelong learning through ways like regular top-ups for the SkillsFuture Credit.
• The Labour Movement can also provide career guidance counsellors. Matching workers to jobs will help avoid possible structural unemployment.
• Encourage more educational institutes to roll out additional modular courses for better time flexibility, so that more workers can go for training.
• The Labour Movement can work with the Workforce Development Agency (WDA) to shorten time of certifying courses to meet the needs of industries.
• Give an option to workers unable to utilise their SkillsFuture Credit for health reasons or otherwise to have the amount transferred to their Medisave account.

4. Improve Retirement Adequacy

• Review the feasibility of the current single retirement age structure to a more variegated retirement age structure beyond 62 to meet diversity in workers’ capabilities and industries.
• Review the CPF contribution rates for workers above 55 years old to help them save more for retirement, especially since more in this group are working longer.
• Consider periodic top-ups to Medisave accounts for all Singaporeans.
• Allocate more resources to make thealthcare affordable, especially for outpatient and intermediate and long-term care (ILTC) sectors.

Source: NTUC This Week

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