1. As announced by the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) Secretary-General Ng Chee Meng in his Budget 2020 Debate speech, NTUC will be piloting the NTUC Job Security Council (JSC) to improve the matching of workers and professionals, managers and executives (PMEs), before they are retrenched or displaced, into jobs to minimise the duration of unemployment. JSC, operationalised by NTUC’s e2i (Employment and Employability Institute), will help place these workers into new jobs ahead of displacement; and if there are any skill gaps between the existing and new job, JSC will work with training partners to provide them with the relevant training.

2. There is a growing concern among workers over job security, especially those in their 40s and 50s who may face a greater risk of being displaced and take a longer time to find a new job. By matching workers into new jobs before being displaced and helping them to acquire the relevant skills for new jobs when necessary, workers’ time spent searching for new jobs with no income is reduced. Besides providing substantive support to workers in job matching and placement, JSC also aims to allay workers’ anxieties over job and income security. The idea of JSC was mooted and supported by union leaders at the NTUC National Delegates’ Conference 2019 where there was collective commitment to enhance protection for workers by moving upstream at the workplace.

Mechanism Behind JSC

3. JSC is an ecosystem of companies that are looking to hire (“receiving companies”) and companies that may have to let go worker(s) (“releasing companies”). Working with companies on board JSC, NTUC’s e2i will have information on job vacancies

and jobs that will soon be phased out. With these information on hand, e2i will be
able to work at matching soon-to-be displaced PMEs into available vacancies.

4. In addition to pre-retrenchment placement support, NTUC’s e2i can also support releasing companies by working with them to redesign jobs, reskill workers and redeploy workers to move into other job functions and access the relevant Government support schemes.

5. Companies on board JSC will also be able to partner associations, who are in the JSC community, to co-organise events such as human resource roundtables to share best practices, thus building and growing the ecosystem of knowledge, discussion and trust. Companies can also use this platform to provide feedback on Government schemes which may lead to fine-tuning of the schemes.

6. There are currently more than 4,000 companies on board JSC, from across different sectors and more than 90 per cent are small and medium-sized enterprises. Together, the companies cover over 500,000 workers. Our tripartite partners such as the Singapore National Employers Federation as well as Trade Associations and Chambers are also on board JSC.