Use government aid to save jobs

GARMENT manufacturers in Singapore have laid off about 700 workers in the past two months, as orders from the United States and Europe slow to a trickle.

With more government help on the way for businesses, officials of the Singapore Industrial and Services Employees' Union (Siseu) have approached and urged several of them to make use of this assistance and put off shedding more workers.

Two other sectors - aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul, as well as printing and publishing - are also on their radar screen.

These sectors are seeing a drop in business too, but employers are keen on investing in training or finding other ways to keep their staff, said labour MP Josephine Teo, an adviser to Siseu. She was speaking to reporters yesterday after meeting a group of workers retrenched by Chin Heng Garments Factory in Kallang Bahru.

They were attending a workshop at the Employment and Employability Institute (e2i) in Bukit Merah, to prepare them mentally for training and finding a new job. The 45 workers were among about 600 employees laid off by the factory on Jan 22.

Mrs Teo said that until this downturn, garment factories had thrived on orders for small batches of clothing that clients needed to have made quickly. Many companies have also, since the 1990s, moved production to countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia where labour is cheaper, but kept an office here to handle buyers from the United States and Europe.

In this downturn, garment factories with production lines here are being forced to reassess their viability, said Mrs Teo. Four garment-makers have shed workers so far. The bulk came from Chin Heng, which shut its production line.

Commenting on ongoing discussions with one company, whose name she declined to disclose, Mrs Teo said: 'Perhaps the Jobs Credit Scheme might cause them to redo their numbers.'

She was referring to the $4.5 billion scheme that gives bosses 12 per cent on the first $2,500 of each month's wages for every resident worker on their Central Provident Fund (CPF) payroll.

The union has also been in talks with aircraft maintenance companies since the third quarter of last year, Mrs Teo said.

'They have reassured us they intend to use this period to invest in training. When they heard of Spur funding, they were very happy,' she said, referring to a government-sponsored scheme that pays part of workers' wages while they are on training as well as subsidises their training fees. It was launched last December.

One company, Turbine Overhaul Services, is sending all its workers for training. Another is looking at equipping its technicians with skills to service more types of aircraft.

Some employers in printing and publishing are thinking along the same lines, said Mrs Teo, citing a printing company that invested in machinery with many features that have not been fully exploited. It intends to train its workers to use these features to produce work of better quality than its competitors, she added.

For those who are retrenched, e2i has more than 6,000 immediate vacancies, Mrs Teo noted. But workers may lack the requisite skills for these jobs, or they may reject these jobs for not paying enough.

The recent move to top up the incomes of low-wage workers with a special Workfare payout will make such jobs more attractive, she said.

She noted that the jobs may also be contract jobs for which bosses may not pay their CPF contribution: 'Through the Jobs Credit scheme, we hope to encourage employers to view these jobs in a different light, pay CPF so that they can gain the cash grant provided by the Government.'

Ms Lee Sow Leng, a former seamstress at Chin Heng, said she would be glad to land a job that pays about $1,000.

Said Ms Lee, 53, in Mandarin: 'I've been tailoring clothes for 23 years and haven't done much else. I hope to learn some English and work as a cashier.'

- The Straits Times