From The Gallery Bold steps to help platform workers and those retrenched

New moves reflect 4G leadership's promise to refresh social compact

- Goh Yan Han

The latest sitting of Parliament saw Singapore make two major moves to better protect vulnerable workers, each one notable for a different reason.

The first is a landmark piece of legislation to give the majority of the 70,500 platform workers here some of the protections that many other workers enjoy, such as representation, retirement savings and compensation should they get injured during work.

The second is a support scheme to help tide retrenched workers over as they search for their next job, with its mechanics and eligibility criteria fleshed out by Manpower Minister Tan See Leng as he fielded MPs' questions.

The new platform workers law, which was passed unanimously on Sept 10, achieves what many governments want to do but have found difficult to operationalise: Confer protection on a group of workers who occupy the interstitial space between independent contractors and full-fledged employees.

Singapore found a workable solution by creating a new hybrid category of workers, as well as innovations such as a framework for injury compensation that clearly defines which platform is liable and the quantum due.

This is no easy feat, given that such workers often take jobs from multiple platforms, and their earnings can fluctuate greatly from month to month.

That the Republic has been able to do so, when others have not, is down to the close collaboration between the Government, the labour movement and businesses, with the result being a law that balances the needs of all parties without undermining key characteristics of the platform economy, said Senior Minister of State for Manpower Koh Poh Koon.