Better Employment For All

After three years of healthy economic growth and strong job creation, the labour market is showing signs of tightening again. Employment prospects are good as we expect 450,000 jobs to be created over the next five years.

The positive employment outlook is indeed good news for our workers. It is also an excellent opportunity for the tripartite partners to press on with our efforts to tackle several key employment challenges – from the widening income gap and cheap-sourcing of low-wage and unskilled workers, to re-employment of mature and retired workers, and redeployment of workers to new growth sectors.

The labour movement has set our sights on working hand-in-hand with the tripartite partners to ensure that there will be better employment for all Singaporeans, young and old, as we ride this current wave of healthy economic growth and strong job growth.

First, with a tightening labour market, competition for workers will get keener. Sectors that are unable to upgrade jobs, skills, productivity and pay will face greater shortage of workers. It is therefore a good time for us to re-create low skilled, low productivity and low paying jobs in as many job sectors as possible into more decent jobs with more decent pay. In this way, we can not only help ease worker shortage in these job sectors, but also help our low-wage workers of today to earn more decent wages tomorrow.

Second, with a low unemployment rate of 2.6 per cent that is expected to stay low, we must do much more to improve the employment rates of Singaporeans across gender and age groups. Two groups of Singaporeans deserve special attention – “back-to-work” women and mature workers aged 55 to 64. To succeed in raising employment rates and the effective retirement age, we will need to restructure our workplace to be more family-friendly and age-friendly.

Last but not least, with keener competition and faster pace of restructuring, we will have to upgrade our economic capability and capacity faster than ever before. We need to help all categories of workers to re-train and adapt faster. We also need to promote the widespread adoption of “best-sourcing” in all sectors of our economy so as to strengthen our competitiveness as a knowledge-based and innovation-driven economy.

These are exciting challenges for the tripartite partners. If we do it right, we will be able to help more Singaporeans to re-enter the workforce and stay in the workforce beyond the official retirement age of 62.

The labour movement is committed to playing our part. We have embarked on the “Labour Movement 2011” journey – to achieve a labour movement for all workers, regardless of skills and knowledge, nationalities and ages.

Together with our affiliated unions, cooperatives and tripartite partners, we pledge to strive for better employment for all so that our workers can earn a good living and lead a better life.