Unionised firms lay off 12,800 in '98

MORE than 12,800 workers in unionised companies lost their jobs last year, three times the number retrenched in 1997.

These workers were among the total number of 27,000 workers axed last year. This figure includes those in non-unionised firms.

The National Trades Union Congress, which released these figures yesterday, pledged to continue doing what it could to help those who had lost their jobs to find new ones. It expects at least 10,000 workers to be retrenched this year.

But the NTUC also had some good news for workers looking for jobs: it has improved the success rate in matching job seekers with the jobs available.

The figure has more than doubled, from 6.5 per cent last October, when the scheme to get jobs for retrenched workers started, to 14 per cent per cent now.

Community Development Councils and the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) also help people looking for work.

More than 80 per cent of those who registered with MOM had at least one job referral.

There were few job matches due to the gap in expectations between employers and job seekers, Manpower Minister Lee Boon Yang noted earlier this month.

There were about 1500 vacancies in 110 companies, including those in the construction, wafer fabrication, aerospace and production sectors, in the NTUC's job bank between Oct 1 and Dec 31 last year. Seventeen of these firms carried out retrenchment exercises.

In the last three months of 1998, 562 workers sought help under the job placement scheme involving the nine industrial unions, the NTUC and NTUC Radio Heart.

Successful job referrals were achieved for 216 of the 562 looking for jobs. Eighty accepted the jobs offered, giving the labour movement a successful job-matching rate of 14 per cent.

Most of the people who went back to work were below the age of 45, an NTUC statement noted, adding that its survey showed that about half the workers retrenched were aged 40 or older.

The seniority-based wage structure, it said, could be one reason for the higher proportion of older employees among retrenched workers, and the NTUC had urged bosses to implement a "base-up" wage system.

This system of paying a worker according to the value of his job, not the length of service, will address the problem of "over-priced" older employees being forced to leave their jobs when their companies are in financial trouble.

Mr Ong Chin Ang, the director of NTUC's industrial relations department, said counselling services, realistic expectations by retrenched workers and close contact with potential employers helped to raise the labour movement's rate of successful job-matching.

The figure will be higher if more employers are willing to give job-seekers aged 40 and above the chance to take up the jobs available despite the current economic slowdown, he added.

People looking for work must be prepared to be re-trained and bosses should not discriminate against those aged 40 and above in their job advertisements, said NTUC assistant secretary-general Heng Chee How, adding: "In all that we do, we seek fair play for our workers."

Published in the Straits Times. Jan 29, 1999