National Wages Council recommends a 5.5% to 7.5% wage increment for lower-wage workers in new guidelines

TL;DR: Lower-wage workers earning up to S$2,200 a month should receive salary increments of 5.5% to 7.5% for the period from Dec1, 2022 to Nov 30, 2023. Amid an uneven recovery for business in different sectors, the National Wages Council (NWC) remains steadfast in fairly and sustainably raising the wages of workers to foster Singapore’s social and […]
There is no escaping the GST hike starting next year. Here’s how you can cope with rising costs.

Goods & Services Tax (GST) will proceed to increase from the current 7% to the proposed 8% from 1 Jan 2023 and subsequently to 9% from 1 Jan 2024. With the rise in GST, the cost of living goes up and workers bear the brunt, especially those from the lower to the middle-income group. Thankfully, […]
Government looking into NTUC’s call for unemployment support

Manpower Minister Dr Tan See Leng affirmed that the Government has heard National Trades Union Congress (“NTUC”) calls for unemployment support for workers and is currently looking at how it can better support displaced workers. Speaking at Forward Singapore’s Empower Pillar engagement session on 2 November 2022, Dr Tan emphasised that with unemployment support, “the goal is to […]
PME Taskforce call for stronger support for PMEs who become involuntarily unemployed

It’s been a full year since nine recommendations were made by the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC)-Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF) PME Taskforce (PME TF) to strengthen PMEs’ employment and employability and enable them to compete fairly and more effectively in the labour market. Since the release of the recommendations, NTUC-SNEF has been working closely with the Ministry […]
We all wish we could solve the gender pay gap

An overview. Getting rid of the gender pay gap is easier said than done. Pay allocation and promotions vary between companies. An example would be. A common practice in multinational companies is to pay all employees in the same position the same salary, regardless of their work experience. Most companies, however, do not assess pay […]
What to do if you are retrenched in a time of Covid-19

As more and more countries and companies are being impacted by Covid-19 which is proving to be a long term battle, news of retrenchment abounds. On 11 August 2020, it was announced that the Singapore economy contracted by 13.2 per cent on a year-on-year basis in the April to June quarter, worse than the 12.6 […]
Foreigners bore brunt in RWS’ retrenchment exercise; Singaporean core increased.

Foreigners bore the brunt of last month’s Resort World Sentosa’s retrenchment exercise. Think for a moment. If we have an all-Singaporean workforce, today, more Singaporeans would be jobless. Foreign workers have always acted as a buffer against local retrenchment in a recession. This was the case during the global financial crisis in 2009. Consequently, unemployment among […]
In order to weed out biased recruitment practices, Patrick Tay suggested disclosing the names of companies on a watchlist.

Patrick Tay wants the names of the errant companies published. He also calls for more robust measures to strengthen the Singaporean Core.
265,000 migrant workers cleared from COVID-19 in Singapore

As of 3 August 2020, about 273,000 workers (approximately 89%) have either recovered or tested to be free from the virus. 265,000 of them have been given the Green AccessCode which allows them to return to work. These are workers from the construction, marine shipyard and process sectors. Of these, 180,000 are residents in dormitories. […]
Carry out independent survey on older people doing menial work

There are people who work out of a need and there are people who work because they want to stay active and escape from the boredom of staying at home.
We don’t need to deny the second category of people in order to acknowledge and help the first.
We should not take away the right of the elderly to work to stay active if they are still fit to work – even if it is cleaning work.
What we need to do is to RESPECT them for the work that they do. You can do that by acknowledging their existence, thank them for the work they do. If not for them, you would not have a clean place to enjoy your food.