Minister of Health, Brother Gan Kim Yong
Brother Lim Swee Say, Secretary-General, NTUC
Group CEOs and staff of our 6 Public Healthcare Clusters
Tripartite Partners
Brothers and sisters of the Labour Movement and
Distinguised guests, ladies and gentlemen
Thank you for taking time off your busy schedule to attend the launch of the Healthcare Cluster Tripartite Workgroup.
Singapore has a well-established healthcare system and prides itself on its focus of providing quality healthcare. Even as the changing demographics of our society pose challenges to the healthcare industry, our healthcare workers never stop devoting their best efforts to raise the standards of health care as they help our people to live well and long.
Formation of Healthcare Cluster Tripartite Workgroup
In March this year, the Labour Movement regrouped its 61 unions into 12 key industry clusters to better help workers boost their productivity - and ultimately, raise their wages progressively. The Healthcare Cluster is one of the 12 clusters. This Tripartite Workgroup is a key milestone achievement for the Healthcare Cluster as this is the very first time, the tripartite partners in this industry is coming together in such a big way. This idea was mooted by NTUC’s Healthcare Cluster of Unions. Both the Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Employers saw this as a positive step forward and joined hands with us. MOH, the 6 Public Healthcare Clusters and the NTUC’s Healthcare Cluster of Unions, together with support from the Workforce Development Agency (WDA) and the Employment and Employability Institute (e2i), now come together with the common objective of raising wages for our Healthcare support workers through productivity, training and job redesign initiatives. Through this strategic partnership, we will be able to harness greater synergy to help move the Healthcare Sector forward.
Although we are formally launching the tripartite workgroup today, I can assure you we started work ever since when we mooted this idea of coming together as everyone was keen and committed to work together to see to the fruition of this tripartite partnership and make a difference for the betterment of our staff and patients. A series of more than 10 focus group discussions at the hospitals conducted by the union with about 150 admin, ancillary and support staff and close sharing with MOH and the 6 clusters coupled with the job evaluation and brainstorming on how to better their jobs and pay paved the way and cut out the work for our tripartite workgroup.
Minister Gan mentioned earlier about the review of the public healthcare sector’s Administrative, Ancillary and Support staff salaries. I am happy to share that the review is in tandem and in alignment with the efforts of our tripartite workgroup. With the formal launch of this tripartite workgroup, I am heartened to share that this Tripartite Workgroup has set its sight to help at least 2,000 Healthcare workers in the healthcare support, admin and ancillary (non-nursing) jobs who are earning $1,700 and below to increase their base salaries by between 10-20% from 2012 to end-2014. Individually, the healthcare clusters have been promoting productivity improvements. The Workgroup will build on this effort; promote co-operation and sharing to introduce a series of productivity, training and job redesign initiatives sector-wide so as to progressively raise the wages of the healthcare support staff. Today’s event is a showcase of some of these best practices which the workgroup is exploring for industry wide use.
Progressive Wage
As part of the drive towards progressive wage, the Tripartite Workgroup will focus on 3 main groups of Healthcare support staff which forms the majority, namely, the Health Attendants (HA), Healthcare Assistants (HCA) and the Patient Service Associates (PSA). The Workgroup will work together to support the progressive wage model which we have come up with, which will help to progressively increase their wages in tandem with productivity improvements, skills upgrading and job redesign initiatives. Minister had earlier shared some of these human interest stories but let me now share…… with this progressive wage model for the healthcare sector “What’s New” and “What’s In It” for these three different groups of workers.
Progressive Wage – Initiatives for HAs & PCAs
For the Health Attendants (HA) and Healthcare Assistants (HCA), some of the new initiatives include industry-wide adoption of up-to-date assistive devices to help them perform their work more efficiently and with greater ease….. in short, to make their jobs lighter and easier with use of technology and mechanisation and be even Faster, Better and Safer. Most importantly, this will also mean they will then be able to learn and perform higher value added jobs. HCAs will also have the opportunity to broaden and deepen their skills sets and play a bigger role in patient care.
For all these new things to be introduced, HAs and HCAs can look forward to:
Progressive Wage – Initiatives for PSAs
In the same vein, Patient Service Associates (PSA) are the frontline staff of our sector and more often than not are the first and also the last touch point for patients and their families. With the increasing patient load in recent years, there has been tremendous stress on our PSAs. To address this, the Tripartite Workgroup will be looking into job re-design and new career progression pathways for the PSAs.
For this, PSAs can look forward to:
Singapore Core
In addition to raising productivity and wages, the Healthcare Cluster is also working towards strengthening Singaporean Core in the healthcare sector.
With the growing and ageing population in Singapore, the demand for quality healthcare will continue to grow. The government had announced major investments in the healthcare infrastructure. Over the next 8 years, 5 new hospitals, including community hospitals, will be built in the northeast, north, west and central Singapore. In the east, a new integrated building will combine Changi General Hospital and St Andrew’s Community Hospital, increasing capacity by 25%. Altogether, the number of acute hospital beds will be increased by more than 30% and Community Hospital beds threefold by 2020. There are also plans to ramp up capacity of specialist outpatient, and long-term care services, such as nursing homes, home care, day care and rehabilitation facilities. In total, the healthcare sector is expected to hire another 35,000 staff in the next 8 years. This includes staff from all levels from health attendants, admin staff and patient service associates to PME jobs like nurses, admin executives, allied health professionals, and doctors.
Such expansion in the healthcare sector means many more good job opportunities for Singaporeans with different qualifications and backgrounds. In the past 8 months, NTUC’s e2i had helped more than 1,500 locals to seek job opportunities in the Healthcare Sector, including the private hospitals. The Healthcare Cluster, through collaboration with NTUC’s e2i, will continue to actively job place Singaporeans into the sector. Back-to-work mums, mature workers and young PMEs can look forward to exciting job opportunities in the growing Healthcare sector.
For example, Mdm Rizda Bte Mohd Sahid, 39 years old, is an example of a back-to-work mum. To take care of her young children, she left the workforce some years ago. Now that her children are schooling, she is ready to return to the workforce. She participated in NTUC’s e2i’s job fair this year and is now working as a HCA in Tan Tock Seng Hospital, earning close to twice her previous salary.
Closing – Better Jobs for All
Today’s launch is the beginning of more good work to be done in the sector. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our valued tripartite partners - MOH, WDA, Alexandra Health, Eastern Health Alliance, Jurong Health Services, National Healthcare Group, NUH and SingHealth Services - for their great support in this Tripartite Workgroup! Together, we will achieve Better Jobs for All in the healthcare sector!
Thank you.
