Good afternoon
Secretary General Brother Lim Swee Say
Brother Hawazi Daipi, Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Manpower and Chairman for Sembawang – Nee Soon Town Council
Brother Stephen Lee, President for Singapore National Employers Federation
President Emeritus Brother John De Payva
Brothers and sisters from the Building & Facilities Management cluster, Government sector, and representatives from the cleaning industry
Today’s Cleaning Sector
The cleaning sector in Singapore today employs about 70,000 workers, out of which two-thirds are locals, across more than 900 cleaning companies. Cleaning services are largely outsourced today, and many are low-priced contracts, depressing the wages of cleaners as a result.
Despite Singapore’s economic growth over the years, salaries in this sector have not kept pace, and cleaners today remain low wage. This is unsustainable for two reasons. First, a widening income disparity in Singapore would create social tensions. For the wages at the bottom percentiles to catch up at a faster rate such that income gap narrows, there needs to be greater efforts to raise the values of jobs at the bottom levels. Second, the low wage has made it unattractive for locals to work in the sector, increasing our reliance on foreign workers over time. This further entrenches the industry in a vicious cycle of low wage, low skills, and low productivity.
A Progressive Wage Model for every sector
Back in June this year, the Labour Movement conducted a seminar for the cleaning industry. Secretary-General NTUC Lim Swee Say at that time announced that the Labour Movement will be working on implementing progressive wages for various sectors. To-date, we have announced progressive wage models in various sectors, such as Transport and Logistics, Hospitality, Healthcare and so on.
The intention of these progressive wage models is to provide a pathway for workers to achieve higher wages in a progressive manner. Our vision is to achieve this through concerted efforts by all parties to upgrade skills and enhance productivity.
Launch of the BFM cluster
Early this year, the Labour Movement set up the Building & Facility Management Cluster (or BFM Cluster in short) comprising 7 unions representing workers from the construction, landscape, cleaning and security as well as building maintenance sub sectors. The cluster hopes to aggregate the concerns and challenges faced by workers in these sectors, and work with tripartite partners to build a Singaporean core within these sectors. Work under the BFM Cluster began in April this year, and one of the first areas that the cluster has focused on is to raise the wages of workers in the cleaning sector.
Tripartite Cluster for Cleaners - PWM for the cleaning industry
To gather momentum and tripartite support for the work to raise wages of cleaners, the Tripartite Cluster for Cleaners (or TCC in short) is initiated to derive consensus and make recommendations for a progressive wage model for the cleaning sector through mutual consultation and ground feedback. The TCC is chaired by NTUC and co-chaired by SNEF, and has representatives from the BFM Cluster, cleaning contractors from the Environment Management Association of Singapore (EMAS), service buyers and government representatives from Ministry of Manpower (MOM) and National Environment Agency (NEA).
Launch of BFM Cluster
Today, we are happy to launch the Building and Facility Management Services (BFM) Cluster and announce the progressive wage model (PWM in short) for the cleaning sector. The PWM would guide how cleaners can earn better wages progressively, based on productivity, work nature of various cleaning jobs, and competency level.
In its deliberations on the progressive wage scales, the TCC took into account what cleaners’ wages could have been if their wages had kept pace with productivity growth, wages of workers of similar profile as cleaners, and feedback from the industry.
The PWM for the cleaning sector will apply to the following sub-sectors which is estimated to employ some 46,000 local cleaners:
The immediate target for us would be to impact 10,000 cleaners in these sub-sectors. Brother Zainal, lead of BFM Cluster, would elaborate on the PWM in his presentation later.
TCC recommends PWM as part of NEA’s Clean Mark Accreditation Scheme
With the introduction of the PWM, it is important that it is given the legs to run on the ground. The BFM Cluster has been working closely with Government agencies such as MOM, MOF and NEA, on appropriate levers to introduce the PWM for cleaners. These include best sourcing initiative, enhancements to NEA’s Clean Mark accreditation scheme, and greater push for productivity efforts under e2i’s Inclusive Growth Programme. A key lever that the cluster has been working on with the Government is to include PWM in NEA’s accreditation scheme.
Conclusion
The progressive wage model hopes to achieve a win-win-win outcome for the service buyers, service providers and workers. With workers that are better paid, the service providers can look forward to better staff morale, leading to lower staff turnover and happier workers, who will in turn be more productive. Service providers will then be able to grow their business and increase their business competitiveness.
Buyers can also look forward to better cleaning standards and quality. This creates a virtuous cycle of better wages, better productivity, and better value for all three parties.
Thank you.
