JOB-HOPPING

Dr Kanwaljit Soin asked the Minister for Labour if he is able to give an estimate of the percentage of the workforce that job hops.

Dr Lee Boon Yang: Mr Speaker, Sir, from CPF records, in 1993, 5.5% (or about 60,400) of the 1.1 million active CPF members who were employees changed jobs more than once during the year. However, as we do not have information on why they changed jobs, we cannot tell what percentage of this 5.5% are job-hoppers. Many could have changed jobs for valid reasons, such as to take up more skilled and higher value-added jobs. These are not job-hoppers. Only those who frequently change jobs for frivolous reasons can be considered as job-hoppers.

Dr Kanwaljit Soin (Nominated Member): Sir, would the Minister consider getting a questionnaire to people who have changed their jobs during a certain period? That might give us information on people who have changed jobs and this will help us to plan our productivity and competitiveness better.

Dr Lee Boon Yang: Mr Speaker, Sir, I do not believe there is a specific reason or a clear case to make out for us to have such a questionnaire or to require such information to be obtained from people who have changed jobs because it will be extremely difficult to ascertain in each and every case whether the reason given by the respondent is in fact the precise reason for the person wanting to change job.

Dr Kanwaljit Soin: Sir, while I agree with the Minister, we must remember that for our higher valued-added skills training, the learning curve becomes longer. And if people tend not to stay in the same job, then our competitiveness will be affected. Therefore, would the Minister consider thinking about this issue and come out with some sort of plan?

Dr Lee Boon Yang: Mr Speaker, Sir, job-hopping is not a new problem. It is not something that has just arisen as a result of our economic growth of 9.9%. Job-hopping is a problem that has been encountered for many years already. The problem itself is aggravated each time there is exceptional economic growth.

There have been many proposals to solve this problem of job-hopping in the past. In 1988, a task force on job-hopping was formed under the auspices of the Singapore National Employers' Federation. They made an in-depth and very comprehensive study of the problem of job-hopping and recommended several proposals to overcome this. Most of the recommendations focused on improved personnel management practices and more efficient use of scarce labour resources. The task force found that they should leave the problem of job-hopping to employers to tackle. They felt that it should be the employers' responsibility, apart from training their workers, to also encourage their workers to remain loyal to the company, and to remain with the company for as long as possible.