NTUC will raise the retirement age to 63 and the re-employment age to 68 for its staff from 1 January 2021 – one-and-a-half years ahead of the national schedule. All its 12 social enterprises will follow suit from 1 July 2021.
NTUC Secretary-General Ng Chee Meng announced the plan at a dialogue session attended by 150 unions leaders, social enterprises representatives and Singapore’s 4G leaders on 7 November 2019 at the National Museum of Singapore. Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat was the guest of honour.
A total of 430 workers from NTUC and its social enterprises will benefit from the early raising of the retirement age. About 280 will benefit from the early raising of the re-employment age.
NTUC and its social enterprises currently employ some 2,400 older workers beyond the current statutory retirement age of 62.
As announced by the Government in August this year, the national retirement and re-employment ages will be raised to 63 and 68 respectively from 1 July 2022.
The national target is to raise retirement and re-employment ages to 65 and 70 by 2030.
Those in the civil service will also see their retirement and re-employment ages raised to 63 and 68 respectively in 2021.
The closed-door dialogue session was part of a series of regular engagements organised by NTUC for union leaders to discuss and share feedback from workers on the ground.
Training, healthcare, digitalisation and how we can collectively strengthen our social fabric were some of the issues raised by union leaders.
The session was the first since NTUC held its National Delegates’ Conference last month where delegates committed to innovating in three key areas – union model, membership model and training model.
At the dialogue, Mr Heng shared that he hopes the union leaders’ commitment to innovating in these three areas will allow the Labour Movement to better care for workers.
Other 4G leaders present at the dialogue were Communications and Information Minister S Iswaran; Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing; and Manpower and National Development Minister of State Zaqy Mohamad.
Mr Heng also toured NTUC’s ReUnion Exhibition showcased at the National Museum before the commencement of the dialogue.
Commenting on the dialogue, NTUC President Mary Liew 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 hear from our national leaders the plans they have that may impact our workers. We are assured that our leaders have our workers at the heart of policy making.”
