With several factors such as the tight labour market, tightening of foreign manpower and low unemployment rate in play, there has been upward pressure on wages to go up. The Labour Movement observes from the Report on Wage Practices 2013, released by the Manpower of Ministry, that basic wage increases for rank-and-file workers (5.4%) have surpassed that for non rank-and-file workers (4.7%). This goes to show that our push to help the lower 20th percentile is reaping some results. We need to continue this push and build on the momentum.
To ensure wage growth is sustainable and progressive, the Labour Movement will be relentless in our push for Progressive Wage Model (PWM) to be pervasive in all sectors and for all workers. This will not only raise productivity and upgrade skills, our workers can also look forward to better wages and better career progression. Ultimately, the end-goal in mind is for our workers to benefit from real –and continuous – wage growth. We also call on employers to tap on the various funding schemes and programmes, so as to achieve higher productivity growth.
At the same time, we note that employment rate is on the upward trend, even for industries where productivity is low. We would like to strongly encourage these industries to move towards manpower lean processes to strive for higher productivity.
Cham Hui Fong
Assistant Secretary-General
National Trades Union Congress
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