The Labour Movement has once again strengthened its position on being pro-family, pro-creation and pro-Singapore. It recently reinforced its call on maternity leave, proposed two-week paid paternity leave and legislated right to Flexible Work Arrangements.
“We hope to see more working persons embrace a Family First Culture by spending more quality time with their loved ones, and more employers changing their mindset by putting in place more pro-family measures.
“This must be the new norm that we set for our society,” said NTUC Assistant Secretary-General Cham Hui Fong said.
She was speaking at the first-ever U Picnic, which was initiated by NTUC’s U Family and supported by NTUC FairPrice to promote Family First Culture in Singapore,
After U Family carried out a survey in September 2012 with over 1,000 respondents comprising singles and married working people, NTUC once again reinforced its position on its earlier recommendations it had put forth to the National Population and Talent Division (NPTD) in August 2012.
To enable fathers to play an active role in parenting, especially during the initial period after the baby is born, NTUC hopes the Government can consider granting two weeks of paid paternity leave, over and above the current 16 weeks of maternity leave, which may be used flexibly and shared with the mother in the baby’s first year.
NTUC wants to set a new social norm where working parents and singles spend quality time with their family on weekends as well as weekdays. For a start, it calls on employers in unionised companies to let staff off on time every day to spend time with their families and embrace the culture of placing Family First.
By advocating Legislated Right to Flexible Work Arrangements (FWA), companies would be encouraged to rethink flexibility and re-design jobs that enable workers to have a family while continuing with their career aspirations, especially for parents with children with special needs and those with very young children.
For a start, to facilitate transition to the new legislation, the right to FWA could be put into a set of Tripartite Guidelines.
NTUC also proposes the Government contribute a sum of $3,000 into the Child Development Account (CDA) as start-up funding and the Government could review the contributions to and the usage of the CDA together with the Edusave account.
