After the success of the inaugural event last year, the Labour Movement’s U Picnic is back in its second year running with a whimsical theme that promises “Food.Fun.Experience” for the participants.
Organised by the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) U Family and supported by NTUC FairPrice, the picnic aims to gather families for an evening of fun-filled activities. With a unique theme this year, it also targets to attract and enthrall both children and the young-at-heart, with its dizzying variety of unique attractions to either create or relive their childhood dreams.
Touted as NTUC’s largest mass family picnic event, this year’s U Picnic surpassed last year’s attendance with over 1,200 working families or 6,000 people at West Coast Park.
As with many other events organised by the NTUC U Family, the key objectives are always aligned – to advocate the building of strong and happy families by championing work-life harmony.
Survey Findings Reveal that Working Families with Caregiving Responsibilities Require More Support
Many working Singaporeans need to juggle with time and resources between work and their role of caregivers for their family members. As a voice for working families, U Family conducted an online survey to find out more about the needs and concerns of these working Singaporeans with caregiving responsibilities in August 2013.
Some 3,635 respondents, mostly working caregivers with the exception of 217 who are not working, participated in the survey. The respondents were between the age of 21 and 65 years old, across different gender, marital status, education levels, employment status and income:
Out of the 3,418 working caregivers, 2,050 of them or 60 per cent gave feedback that they struggled with time in their caregiving responsibilities, for their children, aged parents and/or family members with special needs. On average, they spent 30 hours each week caring for their dependents.
Findings also show that majority of the working caregivers surveyed do not have the relevant support from employers in making their caregiving role easier:
ii. 77 per cent or 2,625 of them do not enjoy any Eldercare Leave from their employers
Going deeper into the profiles of the working caregivers, 27 per cent of the 3,418 working caregivers have multiple dependents to care for, i.e. their children, aged parents and/or family members with special needs.
Out of the 217 non-working caregivers surveyed, 72 per cent or 157 of them left the workforce to look after dependents (63% to look after children, and 21% to look after aged parents).
Labour Movement to Work Closely with Unionised Companies to Improve Flexibility in Workplace and Leave Structure in Collective Agreements or MOUs
From the key findings, the Labour Movement is even more convinced that more work needs to be done to support working families in the area of work-life harmony, and helping them cope with responsibilities both at work and at home.
Taking reference from “Conditions of Employment” Report in 2012, while many employers provided other non-statutory leave benefits like compassionate leave, marriage leave and paternity leave etc to help their employees cope with family commitments, only about 16 per cent gave parent care/sick leave to employees. Though still not widely prevalent, more establishments are offering work-life arrangements. In 2012, 41 per cent of the establishments in Singapore offered at least one form of work-life arrangement (excluding unplanned time-off and informal/ad-hoc tele-working) to their employees. Part-time working was the most common work-life arrangement offered by a third (33 per cent) of establishments, followed by flexi-time (8.2 per cent), staggered hours (7.5 per cent) and tele-working (4.0 per cent).
NTUC has started working with unions to help more unionised companies provide better flexibility in workplace arrangements and company’s leave structure. This may come in the form of company’s commitment in allowing workers to request for FWA or improvement in the leave structure for workers in their MOUs (Memorandum of Understanding) or CAs. One such example is to expand the scope of selected leave category to cover parental or family care, like expanding existing critical illness leave, which is meant for workers to look after family members in intensive care, to cover looking after family members who require medical attention.
“The issue of an ageing population, coupled with labour crunch will only continue to grow and pose as a critical challenge to employers. The survey findings further prove that we need to address concerns of these working caregivers if we do not want to see more people dropping out of the workforce to take care of their dependents. There is this strong call for employers to show more support by putting in place friendly work-place arrangements and having more flexibility in the leave structures so that these caregivers can meet responsibilities both at home and at their workplace,” said Ms Cham Hui Fong, Assistant Secretary-General of the National Trades Union Congress.
“NTUC is currently working very closely with the unions to push out this message to the unionised companies. We hope that more can be enlightened and be on board a common goal to provide work-life harmony for our workers. The target is to have 50 per cent of our unionised companies to provide some form of flexibility in workplace or leave structure by 2015 either in their MOU or CA, so as to address the concerns that our working caregivers face,” she concluded.
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