More complaints of unfair dismissals

SINGAPORE: There was a spike in the number of complaints to the authorities about unfair dismissals last year – particularly from pregnant women and executives.

The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) received 56 complaints involving pregnant employees, up from 26 cases in 2008 and 16 in 2007. Twelve of last year’s cases involved pregnant executives, up from just one the year before.

Minister Gan Kim Yong attributed the increase to various factors “including greater awareness of maternity protection” after the heightened publicity and enhancement of maternity leave benefits.

In all, 149 complaints of unfair dismissal were lodged, up from 101 the previous year and 118 in 2007, Mr Gan revealed in a written response to a question from Member of Parliament Lee Bee Wah.

Under the Employment Act, employees who feel they have been unfairly dismissed can appeal to MOM.

Most cases were mediated and “amicably resolved”, sometimes with a settlement payment, said Mr Gan. But 3 per cent of cases were found to be dismissals without just cause, and the companies had to compensate the employee.

As for executives, those dismissed on grounds related to pregnancy can appeal to MOM. For non-pregnancy related disputes, the Ministry provides mediation; about 270 executives seek its help each year.

“Close to half of such disputes were resolved amicably. The rest of the cases were withdrawn, or the employee sought settlement with their employer directly or through the civil courts, after consultation with the Ministry,” said Mr Gan.

With the executive ranks in the workforce swelling, MOM recently announced plans for a dispute resolution process to help junior- and mid-level professionals, managers and executives resolve common employment tiffs. – TODAY/sc

Job market picks up for fresh graduates: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1035386/1/.html

Fair enough, but if candidates are not realistic in their expectations, there’s no point talking about better opportunities. That said, would things be as optimistic for scores of experienced PMETs out there who still have problems finding work? With “competition” coming from university and polytechnic graduates (i.e. lower starting salaries), how would this affect the chances of qualified but older candidates from landing the same pool of available jobs in the market?

“They need to be a little bit more adaptable and flexible. They shouldn’t just look at the title and the pay but also look at the opportunity of where they can build a career.” – Dhiren Shantilal, SVP, Kelly Services.

CNA: Employment prospects set to become vibrant this year

SINGAPORE: According to the Hudson Report, hiring expectations have not been so high since 1998 when it first started issuing such reports.

Of the over 1,500 key employment decision makers in Asia surveyed, 51 per cent of bosses expect more hiring to take place in the first quarter of this year.

This is quite a contrast indeed from the previous quarter when the figure was 34 per cent.

Last year, employees suffered pay cuts and restructuring seemed to be the order of the day. It was even worse for graduates entering the workforce for the first time.

But now, besides better hiring prospects, employees can expect more money as well. Respondents in most industries expect to pay higher salaries to attract talent. In fact, only eight per cent said they will not be increasing wages.

According to the survey, most are planning to give out much higher bonus payments this year. In fact, about 74 per cent of them plan to pay discretionary year-end bonuses for 2009.

Even though the overall mood seems buoyant, some analysts remain cautious.

Jimmy Koh, UOB economist, said: “It is recovering and it is normalising – even the expectations of hiring is a normalisation process, but it will take a while because 70 per cent of global GDP is still struggling.”

David Ang, executive director, Singapore Human Resource Institute, said: “You’ll probably get these people on contract basis, on part-time basis, on project basis and so on.

“So, while there’s increased hiring, I think one also needs to see in what way these are the permanent employment opportunity vis-a-vis other types of employment opportunities.”

The survey said hiring expectations are very high for the banking and financial sector. Another sector reflecting major expectations of job opportunities is the media, advertising and public relations industry. – CNA/vm

Under-employment among older PMETs becoming an uptrend in Singapore

Source: ChannelNewsAsia

SINGAPORE: Singapore’s labour movement said tackling the issue of under-employed workers will be a big challenge in the coming year.

It said under-employment is becoming more pertinent among older Professionals, Managers, Executives and Technicians also known as (PMETs).

And efforts must be put in place to help them get jobs suited to their skills and qualifications.

PMETs were the hardest hit during the economic downturn.

Many, like those in the financial sector, were left jobless and the labour movement said they had to settle for whatever job they could get to make ends meet.

But while this brings down unemployment levels, the issue of under-employment has been on the uptrend.

Halimah Yacob, Deputy Secretary-General, NTUC, said: “He may be very qualified, very skilled, but the jobs that he wants to do and is willing to do is not available.

“He ends up doing a job that does not make full capacity, productive use of his capabilities. It also involves the case where jobs are not paying them the kind of salary or earning that they feel is commensurate with their qualifications and skills.”

Madam Halimah said she’s seen many cases where middle-aged degree-holders who lost jobs during the downturn become taxi drivers.

She said such under-employment is unavoidable as with slow economic growth, job opportunities are limited.

But as the economy recovers, the labour movement will offer targeted help to under-employed workers.

Mdm Halimah said: “We recognise that the person cannot remain underemployed in perpetuity because that is going to be very frustrating and demoralising. That is where we then need to focus help to help him to transit so that he can make better use of his skills and capabilities to move to other sectors and to retrain them and move to other sectors that require their skills and qualifications.

“Of course it may not be easy because some of them may be working in one sector for so many years. So a re-tuning is needed to acquire other skills to move to other sectors.”

The labour movement will work on job-matching assistance and training courses and Madam Halimah said workers must also actively find out more about job opportunities relevant to them. – CNA/vm

We do know for a fact that PMETs were the hardest hit in the recent economic downturn– in my line of work, I come across many PMETs who have been unemployed for up to 18 months, falling into the category of the chronic unemployed.

While efforts are being made on the part of the government, particularly with training initiatives, the fact remains that the employability of PMETs in the coming year and beyond have more to do with economic outlook and confidence more than the skills and competencies of the individual: if companies are still not optimistic in their hiring, PMETs will continue to face challenges in terms of finding and securing new jobs.

Granted, the economic outlook according to the folks in the financial sector is optimistic for 2010, but until such optimism is translated into expanding productive capabilities, particularly in the manufacturing and technology sectors, I’m not so sure if this necessarily means a lowering of the unemployment rate next year.

For now, we can only hope for the best. While the partying goes on tonight to mark the start of 2010, let us all say a little prayer in our hearts that things will indeed be better, and may those who found the going tough in 2008 and 2009 find some glimmer of hope…and a new job.

 

Labour movement gears up to go on the offensive to cut unemployment in 2010

Source: ChannelNewsAsia

SINGAPORE: It’s been a tough year on the jobs front as the global recession took its toll on Singapore’s economy.

But after a year of defensive moves designed to save jobs and prevent mass retrenchments, the labour movement is set to go on the offence next year.

It aims to reduce unemployment to below three per cent in 2010 and get to full employment as soon as possible.

Currently the unemployment rate in the third quarter of 2009 stands at 3.4 per cent.

Labour Chief Lim Swee Say said that Singapore has still performed comparably better than other parts of the world as it cut costs to save jobs and introduced schemes like Jobs Credit and Spur training.

Through the Employment and Employability Institute, about three in five jobseekers, or about 16,000, were placed in jobs and of these more than 60 per cent moved across industries.

Looking forward to the end of the year, the labour movement is hopeful that retrenchment figures will round up at 20,000 which is lower then the figures for the two previous downturns of 26,000 in 2001 and almost 30,000 in 1998.

Going forward, the labour movement also hopes to focus on three areas to boost employment next year, including among professionals, managers, executives and technicians or PMETs.

Mr Lim said: “At the end of the day, we hope re-employment rate in Singapore can be further increased, the structural employment can be further reduced and under-employment among the middle aged PMETs can be further avoided through re-skilling, re-training.”

One issue next year for firms used to getting help in keeping jobs is the withdrawal of the Jobs Credit scheme by June.

Mr Lim said the scheme is not a sustainable long-term solution and that businesses need to transform themselves to become more productive.

Still, he was hopeful that the Economic Strategies Committee or ESC report, due next month, would offer targetted help.

He added: “In the case of Jobs Credit, it applies to all companies big and small, all industries. In the case of ESC, we will expect that some of the incentive programmes will be targeted at companies that are committed to upgrade their abilities, to expand capacity.”

The Jobs Credit Scheme had previously been criticised as being too blunt a tool.

The Spur training scheme though, will remain in place for the year as Mr Lim said the bottleneck for next year is more likely to be skills development rather than job creation. – CNA/vm

42,000 unemployed find jobs through Spur

[Source: MyPaper, 23 Dec 2009]

THE report card for the Singapore Workforce Development Agency’s (WDA) Skills Programme for Upgrading and Resilience (Spur) is out.

The programme has trained more people than it aimed to,found jobs for many trainees who were unemployed, and saved countless others from being retrenched.

Started in November last year, the programme has enrolled 264,000 workers in its various training courses, exceeding the target of 220,000.

The programme also helped about 42,000 of them – unemployed citizens and permanent residents – find jobs, mainly in the food-and-beverage, cleaning, wholesale and retail-trade, manufacturing, and security sectors.

About seven in 10 were rank-and-file workers with up to secondary education. Six in 10 were aged 40 and above. In addition, more than 2,770 others were given traineeships in more than 390 firms, under a government-funded Professional Skills Programme Traineeship scheme launched in May this year.

2010 job market outlook remains bleak

Massive recovery of employment market not expected next year
[Source: ChannelNewsAsia]

SINGAPORE: It has been one of the worst recessions Singapore has faced since independence and the nation has taken several approaches to tackle it.

The government, employers and workers have made a collective effort to cut costs and save jobs. And for the first time, Singapore has drawn on its past reserves to fund a major resilience package.

The economic downturn started in the middle of 2008 and the economic situation worsened as it spilled over into the new year. The government responded by bringing the Budget forward to January 2009, announcing a S$20 billion resilience package.

Liang Eng Hwa, deputy chair, Government Parliamentary Committee (Finance and Trade and Industry), said: “We need to build more resilience in the economy so that in the event there is another downturn of this magnitude, Singapore will not be that badly affected. Secondly, this crisis also drives home the point that we need to maintain high reserves and have a strong fiscal position.”

With the use of past reserves, the Jobs Credit scheme was launched to help companies reduce labour costs and save jobs through cash grants. The scheme has been extended for six months till June 2010.

More than S$3.6 billion of Jobs Credit would have been paid out by the government after its fourth payment on December 24. Another two, stepped-down payments in March and June 2010 will cost the government another S$675 million.

“The six months, hopefully, will be helpful to companies as they start to build new orders for the businesses, find new markets and if need be, further restructure the business so that they can stay viable for the long term,” said Mr Liang.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office and NTUC’s secretary-general, Lim Swee Say, said: “For Singapore, we are already looking beyond Jobs Credit because we know Jobs Credit is not here to stay. So the tripartite partners are now working very closely… asking ourselves how we can be cheaper, better and faster.

“Being cheaper means enhancing our productivity so that every piece of equipment and worker can produce more output, so that we can reduce the costs of doing business and enhance our competitiveness.

“The good news is that many countries are thinking along the same way, but in Singapore, we are one step ahead of them. That’s because the trust and unity among the tripartite partners during the downturn were not weakened but in fact, further strengthened. As a result, come 2010, the tripartite partners are able to run together, ahead of the competition elsewhere.”

The Economic Strategies Committee was formed earlier this year to focus on developing and recommending strategies to grow Singapore’s future as a leading global city in the heart of Asia. Its report is expected to be released at the end of January 2010.

Mr Liang said: “I have spoken to many business people and they have told me that they prefer to have a more steady growth, even though the growth may be at a lower rate, as opposed to high growth where there will be volatility.

“Businesses want to have some stability and certainty so that they can plan for the longer term. Excessive volatility tends to attract a risk premium to the business and thereby increasing overall costs.

“I would hope that the next phase of growth would be smart growth. In the last three to four years, we have seen strong growth in our economy. While it is good to have strong growth, it has also caused other problems. We have seen bottlenecks in certain segments of the economy, we have seen costs risen and that has led to inflationary pressures, eroding our competitiveness.

“I think we have to be careful where our bottlenecks and constraints are, and identify our comparative advantages, play on our niches so that we can have targeted growth where there is potential.”

Also witnessing its fair share of ups and downs is Singapore’s labour market, which has seen some improvements in the past few months.

Even though Singapore’s economy appears to be recovering, the Ministry of Manpower said it will take some time before its employment situation stabilises.

Manpower Minister Gan Kim Yong said: “One main reason is that many of the employers have held on to excess workers in the recession because of the various measures we have put in. Therefore, as the economy recovers, many of these employers will tap on the excess manpower and capacity that they have before they start to expand and recruit new workers.

“Recruitment and employment opportunities will typically lag behind economic recovery and therefore it is important for us to take that into account while the economy recovers. Over the next twelve months, we expect the employment market to remain more or less stable, but we do not see a massive recovery of the employment market.

“It is important for us to continue to help workers who are affected as it will take some time for them to get back to the job market. It is important for us to continue to train them and give them skills.

“It is also important to remember that many of the new opportunities that are coming along after the recovery will be new investments and they will have new skill sets. So we have to prepare our workers, train them and upgrade them so that they will be able to tap the new opportunities.”

Asked about some of his key concerns for workers as Singapore recovers from the global downturn, Mr Gan explained that he is always worried about the employment of workers.

He said: “At the moment, we have some 20,000 jobs which are immediately available on our database. We have 14,000 job-seekers on our register and this has come down significantly from the peak.

“Theoretically, they should match each other and we should have excess jobs short of workers. But we could not match them because of a variety of reasons. Skills mismatch is one – therefore training is one – and expectation is another factor.

“We need to send some of these workers for career counselling so that they would have a realistic expectation as to what kind of jobs they can do. It is also important to enhance their basic employability skills.

“Some of them have not worked in a big company before, so interpersonal skills, how to deal with your superior and peers are important employment skills… We have done much better in this recession than in the previous one because we have paid a lot of attention to helping the workers prepare themselves for employment rather than just simply job matching.”

For 2010, Singapore’s Trade and Industry Ministry has forecast economic growth of between 3 and 5 per cent.

Fancy job titles can raise workers’ morale

[Source: mypaper, 21 Dec 2009]

I REFER to Mr Jeffrey Law Lee Beng’s letter, “Dump fancy, meaningless job titles” (my paper, Dec 18).

It has long been acknowledged that many Singaporeans shun certain jobs because of poor pay, drudgery and lowly status.

Many who hold such jobs would not be keen to share their designations with friends and family, as they bear negative connotations.

While a fixation on status has led to an increase in the number of fancy job titles, such as “sanitation officer” for toilet cleaners and “customer- service executive” for sales staff in shops, there is really no harm in conferring such titles on employee

As Mr Law admitted, such designations could instil a sense of dignity in workers and spur them to provide better service.

After all, if such titles could alter employees’ mindsets, they would perform better than if they had no pride in their jobs.

And using fancy titles, though a small gesture, is a painless effort that could reap significant dividends if Singaporeans become more accepting of such jobs and do them well.

The salaries for such positions are low and there are few rewards and benefits.

Let us not begrudge those who take them up their fancy titles.

MR ADAM LEO ISIDORE TAN

5.5% growth in 2010 means…?

Key Indicators: [Source: Statistics Singapore]

• GDP up 0.6% in Q32009
• CPI down 0.8% in Oct 2009
• Total Trade down 12.4% in Oct 2009
• Retail Sales down 11.8% in Sep 2009
• Index of Industrial Production up 3.6% in Oct 2009
• Total Population 4.99M in Jun 2009
• Employment 2.95M in Sep 2009
• Unemployment Rate (SA) 3.4% in Sep 2009
• Wages/Earnings (monthly average for quarter) S$3,562

It seems that despite the economic recovery ["Singapore declares its recession over"], unemployment is still pretty much a big concern in this country. We can always analyse the statistics and say things like “unemployment persist because of structural rigidities, especially since we recently came out of recession”, but try telling a PMET who had been retrenched and unable to find a job for the past 18 months just that, and see what kind of response you would get.

In a latest survey, private sector economists (from the financial institutions, obviously) projected optimistic figures for Singapore’s growth in 2010 – 5.5% [link here] but at the same time cautioned that economic growth will likely be “subdued”.

In all honesty, I don’t think the projected growth figures make sense to understanding and solving unemployment in Singapore– for one, you were polling fund managers and financial professionals whose agenda is more aligned towards making sure their clients’ financial portfolios remain attractive for them to stay invested. There has been a long-standing assumption that a recovery in the financial markets will always trigger actual economic activity and hence growth, but don’t be misled: it’s not always the case, even if the financial dudes in pin-stripe suits driving flashy cars and working from well-furnished offices continually try to convince you thus.

For one, consider the following sentence:

They are also counting on major economies stabilising so that consumer confidence can rebound and support manufacturing and export activity here.

Granted, we are an export oriented economy. It would then appear to make sense that if the major economies stabilise, consumer spending will necessarily increase, and with our manufacturing and export levels going up, it indirectly means more jobs to go around. Hurrah.

Take a good look at the words in bold– what these financial people (I don’t even want to call them economists) are telling you is this: we have no idea IF it happens but WHEN economies like the US and Europe recover, and we are very optimistic they will come back in a big way, the whole world will be happy once again. And please publish this in front-page news headlines so more people will purchase financial products. Past performance does not guarantee future performance–check with your banker to see how we fit you into a new “global economic recovery structured note (GERN)” that will target recovering economies.

And what then, for people hoping the economic recovery will bring about more employment opportunities? Well, more or less the response will be thus: Employment? Oh, don’t worry, because we have already said the economy will recover, you will find a job– I can’t gurantee what job, but you will have one. And oh, please go and invest in GERN– do your part, stimulate the economy. Past performance does not guarantee future performance, LISTEN to your banker…oh, you’re unemployed and can’t afford? Who cares then! I’m not a freaking charity, am I??

In Economics 101, we were taught that while GDP growth is a function of Consumer Expenditure, Investment, Government Spending and Net Exports, Consumer Expenditure takes up the large gist of the pie accounting for more than 70% in some economies. If you asked me, we’re better off having more Great Singapore Sales or putting up with more roadworks in Singapore to stimulate the economy than to count on the US, European and Japanese consumers buying made-in-Singapore products, or trying to get more people invested in pseudo-Ponzi schemes.

And here’s the thing: no job, no income, where got money to spend??