ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI
SINGAPORE – The growing need to protect workers dominated question time in Parliament on Oct 6, as MPs increased scrutiny on Government efforts to cushion layoffs amid a spike in retrenchments.
In response, the authorities opened the door to more worker protections – signalling possible action against employers who are financially able to pay retrenchment benefits but do not.
The questions come against the backdrop of a larger political promise: Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s pledges that there will be no jobless growth in Singapore, and that though the Government may not be able to protect every job – it will protect every worker.
But even as protections are debated, the next pressure point on this promise is emerging: getting retrenched workers and fresh grads into jobs.
Scrutiny on the adequacy of current employment legislation came from the ruling party’s MPs. Thirteen PAP MPs, including four labour MPs, filed questions on retrenchment for Oct 6 against one Workers’ Party MP.
This came after statistics in September showed retrenchments reached 4,620 in the second quarter of 2026 – the highest figure since the pandemic. The rate of retrenchment was 2.0 per 1,000, above the Manpower Ministry’s (MOM) non-recession norms of 1.5 to 1.7 per 1,000 employees.
The 15 questions filed, the most on retrenchments in this term of Government, asked for more safeguards, pointing to weaknesses in existing protections.
One is the lack of legally-mandated...
A Wixom, Michigan, business accused of making false statements to obtain a loan has agreed to pay a settlement of just over $1.5 million after it was sued by the federal government, according to th...