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Yesterday evening, about 150 participants comprising union leaders from unions affiliated to the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) and representatives from NTUC’s Social Enterprises, participated in a closed-door dialogue with Singapore’s fourth-generation (4G) leaders. Mr Heng Swee Keat, Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) and Minister for Finance, was the Guest-of-Honour at the dialogue.
Hosted by NTUC President Mary Liew and NTUC Secretary-General Ng Chee Meng, the dialogue was held at the National Museum of Singapore where NTUC’s ReUnion Exhibition is currently being showcased. Other 4G leaders present were Mr S Iswaran, Minister for Communications and Information; Mr Chan Chun Sing, Minister for Trade and Industry; and Mr Zaqy Mohamad, Minister of State, Ministry of Manpower & Ministry of National Development.
The dialogue was part of a series of regular engagements organised by NTUC for union leaders to share ground feedback from workers and was the first since the NTUC National Delegates’ Conference (NDC) in October 2019. It is also part of a series of Singapore Together engagements by DPM Heng and the 4G leadership in the run-up to Budget 2020, to hear more ideas and perspectives from Singaporeans, and identify new opportunities to work with them.
At the dialogue, union leaders had lively discussions with DPM Heng and the 4G leaders present, on issues such as training, healthcare, digitalisation, and how we can collectively strengthen our social fabric.
DPM Heng shared his hopes that the union leaders’ commitment at NDC to innovate in three key areas – our union model, membership model and training model – will enable the Labour Movement to better care for workers.
Early adoption of retirement and re-employment ages
As part of the Labour Movement’s efforts to innovate itself to better serve workers, DPM Heng also said he was heartened that it has its older workers in mind, and continues to adopt age-friendly workplace practices. NTUC is taking the lead to raise its retirement age and re-employment age to 63 and 68 respectively from 1 January 2021, one and a half years ahead of the national schedule. All of NTUC’s 12 social enterprises (SEs) will follow suit from 1 July 2021.
Currently, about 430 workers from NTUC and its SEs stand to benefit from the early raising of the retirement age, while about 280 workers stand to benefit from the early raising of the re-employment age. In total, the NTUC and its SEs now employ some 2,400 older workers beyond the current statutory retirement age of 62.
Ms Mary Liew, President of NTUC, said, “We’re very happy to have the opportunity to engage our 4G leaders. Such regular engagements are important, as it gives us an effective platform to share our workers’ hopes and concerns, as well as discuss how we can work with the Government to co-create a future Singapore.
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