Mr Speaker, sir,
Thank you for allowing me to join this debate. I join this House in thanking the President for his Address which laid out the various priorities for the Singapore government and Singapore citizens in building Singapore’s future together. I support the President’s call for both economic security and social cohesion as these are very important to Singapore’s survival and the well-being of our citizens.
Sir, the President is right in taking a very inclusive approach in discussing Singapore’s future. We cannot pride ourselves with having safe, secure and prosperous Singapore where there is still a large segment of our fellow Singaporeans earning low wages. I welcome the Ministry of Manpower’s (MOM) addendum on the President’s Address and its commitment to helping vulnerable workers and promoting an inclusive growth for Singapore workers.
We must not leave the lower income behind in seeking a better future for Singapore. We have done much to improve the life of our low wage workers. A slew of social assistance schemes are in place to provide the necessary support comprising workfare, Com-care and many others. While I acknowledged that a lot has been done to help low wage-workers, we can still do more.
Many of us have read about the plight of low wage workers in the newspapers, or would have met and spoken to low wage workers to understand the problems they face. I have met many low wage workers through my work with the NTUC, and at meet-the-people sessions. They earn low salaries, struggle to meet the basic needs of their family members, may not have high job security, and may be afraid to speak up for their rights as they may feel worried about losing their jobs, especially if they are older workers. Rising costs have made their daily struggles even harder. Although the Singapore economy has performed well last year, overall, there is an increasing wealth divide.
Recently, it was reported in the papers that real income growth for low wage workers for the past 10 years has been flat. In his budget speech this year, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam said that Singapore plans to raise real wages by 30 per cent over the next 10 years. Sir, I would like to urge the government to ensure that the push to increase real wages in the next 10 years will be felt by low wage workers as they are the ones who are most in need of higher salaries. In fact, I would like to suggest revising the target for low wage workers’ salaries to increase in real terms by 50% in the next decade so that there will be an even greater impact on these workers. In annual terms, this would only be 5% real wage increase per year.
I do not think there is a magic wand that can change the life of low wage workers overnight. Some of us may think that having a minimum wage is the way forward and this issue has been debated extensively. I would like to suggest that we explore all options and have a range of initiatives that would help workers get better wages before we even consider having a minimum wage policy.
Let us continue with existing schemes such as WIS, WTS and IGP and make the necessary refinements to ensure the intended outcomes are achieved. My parliamentary colleague, Dr Amy Khor, has made good suggestions on improving Workfare schemes yesterday and I fully support the suggestions she is making.
Moving forward, let us dare to take bold steps to help low wage workers earn better wages and better employment. First, as a Labour MP, I would like to urge that the drive towards achieving sustained real wage growth for low wage workers be a Key Performance Indicator for every ministry, statutory boards, and large social enterprises. We must do this as a shared national initiative to help our fellow Singaporeans. Helping these workers earn better salary and employment terms should not fall only on the shoulders of the union or Ministry of Manpower or MCYS but, it is a national mission that entails us to fulfill our moral obligation to take care of every workers that work for us regardless whether they are direct employees or those engaged through service providers. We cannot afford to have any Ministry or organization to take a lackadaisical attitude towards ensuring better wages and better working conditions for the workers working for them. If it is within your sphere of influence, work at it!
Sir, this can be done if every Ministry, Statutory Board and Social Enterprises pushes for higher productivity and the gains in the form of higher wages for the low-wage workers. The union has been driving the Inclusive Growth Programme to help companies boost their productivity and share the productivity gains with the low wage workers but, there is an urgent need for this Programme to be scaled up for greater systemic impact. I want to call for every government agencies to take the lead in implementing IGP aimed at improving the low wage workers’ productivity to justify higher wages.
Second, let us re-look the strategy of outsourcing manual or blue collar jobs in the public service. Over the last decade and a half or so, the trend of outsourcing has taken the world and Singapore by storm and a lot of functions, including cleaning jobs, security are outsourced to service providers. While outsourcing has many benefits – such as keeping companies economically nimble and allowing them to focus on their core businesses, it has its drawbacks too. It may mean that such workers will find it a big challenge for their salaries to increase or for them to get good employment terms.
Sir, when we make calls for higher wages and better employment terms– whether it is for low wage workers or other workers – we must remember that it means that expenditure and costs will go up. Having these workers as direct employees will lead to higher expenditures by ministries and public institutions, and we must be prudent in spending public funds. At the same time, we should ask ourselves, even if we can quantify the savings made from outsourcing, what is the social cost to it? If we spend more of public funds on having low wage workers as direct employees of the public sector, while ensuring that they have higher salaries and better benefits, would it not translate to looking after the needs and welfare of Singapore workers? Having workers as direct employees will increase a worker’s sense of belonging to the public service and they will feel that the government is taking care of their interests. I recall when I was a child; my father was a civil servant as a daily rated worker with the PWD. As a result, my whole family had medical benefits that covered public clinic consultations. We did not have a lot of comforts but I would not say that life was so terrible, because I never felt like I was terribly disadvantaged as our basic needs were met. I wish this can be the case for all low wage workers in the public sector to be direct employees so that they are protected from the bluntness of the economic system.
Where possible, I would like to encourage ministries and public institutions to consider having direct employees instead of practicing outsourcing. This is not totally impossible as there are still some government departments that practice direct hiring. One example is the National Environment Agency (NEA) which still has sanitation & vector control employees as its direct staff. NEA tries to improve the productivity of these workers by sending them for training, and when their capacities and capabilities are improved, they are able to enjoy higher salaries. For this NEA should be lauded as they could have easily outsourced the functions of these jobs but instead chose to keep these workers as direct employees.
Finally, I would instead like to propose for ministries, public institutions and responsible companies to practice “best sourcing” if employing these low-wage workers as direct employees is not viable. The union has been actively championing Best Sourcing as an initiative. This year, the Tripartite Committee on Low-Wage Workers will be pushing for companies to practice responsible outsourcing so that the basic rights of low wage workers are protected and workers receive fair wages. I support this call but would like to suggest that the MOM or unions work on a list of good service providers that are known to have responsible human resource practices, as they protect the basic rights of their workers. Ministries and public institutions should then consider only tenders put up by these companies recognized by the union as paying fair wages and providing fair employment terms to their workers.
I would like to encourage ministries to relook their existing contract with service providers and when the contract is due, renegotiate terms for low wage workers where possible. In addition, every Ministry should also review their long-term fixed contracts involving cleaners, landscaping and security to ensure that these workers are able to enjoy wage increments instead of earning the same salary for the duration of the contract. NTUC as a union is willing to work with any Ministry to ensure the contracts would be fair to the workers.
If all these measures do not sufficiently address the issue, then we might have to think about introducing a law to make service buyers legally accountable for the welfare of these workers.
