ASSISTANCE TO RETRENCHED WORKERS

Mr S. Vasoo asked the Acting Minister for Labour (a) what actions are being taken to monitor the problems of retrenched workers; and (b) what programmes are planned to assist them.

Mr Lee Yock Suan: Mr Speaker, Sir, the Ministry keeps a close monitor on retrenchments and the problems of retrenched workers in finding jobs. Many employers have developed the practice of informing the Ministry of impending retrenchments, two weeks to a month in advance. The Ministry also conducts a quarterly survey of companies to find out the number of workers retrenched. From these two sources, the Ministry obtains the names and addresses of retrenchees. The information is used to offer employment assistance to retrenched workers and to monitor at the aggregate level their progress in seeking re-employment.

The best way to assist retrenched workers is to help them find alternative jobs. My Ministry's Employment Service Department sends personal letters to the retrenched worker to offer its job-matching services. The response to this invitation last year was, however, low, only about 15%. It is very likely that the majority did not need our help.

Among those who seek my Ministry's assistance, many are selective in their job requirements. They are counselled in the hope that they will lower their wage expectations and accept other jobs which they are also qualified for. We also request employers to relax their requirements, eg, by taking in older workers and those with lower educational qualifications.

In the past few months, my Ministry has made general improvements to its job-matching process and increased manpower and other resources to help unemployed workers find jobs earlier.

My Ministry is also in close liaison with the NTUC Job Placement Unit. We exchange job vacancy information to increase job opportunities for unemployed workers.

Mr Jeyaretnam: Mr Speaker, Sir, would the Minister say, in cases where the employers advise the Ministry about impending retrenchment, whether the Ministry takes any action to inquire if the retrenchment is really necessary or not? Or does it merely accept the company's retrenchment?

Mr Lee Yock Suan: Mr Speaker, Sir, if our Singapore economy is to function properly, it is important that companies should be able to adjust and redeploy their workers in the best way they think fit. I do not think the employers would just retrench workers out of spite or for no good reason. Usually because there is a drop in orders there simply are not enough jobs to offer their workers. They have, in fact, to offer to the workers, especially those with longer service, very substantial retrenchment benefits. This, in itself, will act as a check against hasty or unjustified retrenchments. The philosophy of the Government is that we should not interfere with that process. We should leave it to market forces. Those who are retrenched, in fact, are able to find jobs.

Let me quote some figures. Last year, there were about 20,000 workers retrenched. Of this number, about 16,000 were Singaporeans and permanent residents. As at the end of last year, about half of them have found jobs; that means about 8,000 have found jobs. Another 3,000 were retrenched only in the fourth quarter. So they were still looking for jobs. This leaves about 5,000 workers. Some of them may have found jobs on their own, some may be self-employed, and so on. We do not know much about these people because they are not shown up in the CPF records. We check on them through the CPF records. Others, like housewives, may have dropped out of the labour market.

Whilst the present situation of unemployment is a cause for concern (the Government therefore is taking various measures to try and stimulate economic recovery) in actual fact the situation is not really that bad because even now we are still getting requests from many companies, for example, garment factories, wanting to employ foreign workers because our Singaporean women and young girls are unwilling to work in garment factories. The same thing applies to the construction industry and the woodworking industry.

I have given Members the example of our offer of assistance to the retrenched workers. Very few of them come to us for assistance. So I think they are able to find jobs on their own. In fact, over the last few days we have found that the Seagate Technology advertisement appears every day. Is that a sign of severe unemployment?

Mr Heng Chiang Meng (Jalan Kayu): Mr Speaker, Sir, may I ask the Acting Minister for Labour what would be his advice to industrialists who are looking for Singaporeans to fill the jobs but cannot find any Singaporean, and yet they cannot get work permits for foreign workers?

Mr Lee Yock Suan: Mr Speaker, Sir, recently a lot of garment factories appealed to me to be allowed to employ Malaysian girls because they could not find Singaporeans. We tried our best to bring the unemployed workers from our Employment Service Department to these factories and encouraged them to adjust to these new jobs. Unfortunately very few of them stayed on or wanted the jobs. Eventually I had to relax our regulations and allow more of these garment factories to bring in Malaysian girls. So we do adjust our work permit regulation and we also counsel the job seekers, as well as the employers, to try and minimize this problem. But our problem is really nowhere as severe as in the early 1960's when our unemployment rate was 12-15%. At that time there were no foreign workers in Singapore. As of now, we still have over 100,000 foreign workers in Singapore.

Mr Speaker: We have 15 seconds left before end of Question Time.