JURONG SHIPYARD (Early Retirement of Selected Employees)

Mr J.B. Jeyaretnam asked the Acting Minister for Labour how his Ministry views the practice by some companies to force early retirement on selected employees and if he will make a statement in particular on the exercise carried out by Jurong Shipyard noting especially the fact that all the selected employees were Singapore citizens and the Malaysian employees were left untouched.

Mr Lee Yock Suan: The view of my Ministry is that no company should force its employees to accept early retirement. However, employees may agree to accept early retirement.

In the case of Jurong Shipyard, workers were offered benefits as specified in the Collective Agreement if they agreed to retire early to help the company cope with the downturn in the shipbuilding and repairing industry. A total of 275 workers took up the offer and collected the benefits provided under the scheme.

Shortly after accepting the offer, some of the workers approached my Ministry for assistance alleging that they were forced to accept early retirement. They also wanted to claim extra benefits. My Ministry took up the matter with the Management and was informed that the union and the workers had agreed to the early retirement scheme.

As the Management had given the assurance that the scheme was voluntary, my Ministry and the NTUC requested them to accept any worker who wished to return to the Shipyard without any break in service. The Management agreed to do so provided that the worker refunded the retirement benefit and other payments which he had collected under the scheme. 18 workers have since refunded the benefits they received and returned to work. Some other workers insisted on being allowed to return to work without having to pay back the retirement benefit and other payments they had received. This the Management could not accept.

It is not true that only Singaporean workers were involved in this scheme. The company had 139 Malaysian workers of whom 10 accepted early retirement. The company has over the past 3 years almost halved its foreign workforce through resignations and non-renewal of work permits when they expired.