Cleaners in Singapore to enjoy higher wages from 2023 under latest PWM review

FROM 2023 onwards for a period of six years, workers in the cleaning industry will enjoy higher wages under Tripartite Cluster for Cleaners' (TCC) latest review of the Cleaning Progressive Wage Model (PWM) on Monday.

Zainal Sapari, NTUC assistant director-general and chairman of the TCC, said that the proposed PWM wage ladder comes after extensive consultations with industry stakeholders and added that such a move would provide "greater certainty to service providers and service buyers to price and award the cleaning contracts that would be fair to all stakeholders".

Under the new wage adjustments, workers in the cleaning sector would enjoy increments of between 5 and 20 per cent, with more significant increases in the first year of implementation before gradating to smaller increments subsequently.

The first adjustment in 2023 will see base wages of general cleaners, for example, increase 19.7 per cent to S$1,570 from S$1,312.

Mr Zainal said that raising the minimum base wage more "aggressively" in the first year served to reflect the value of work and help narrow the income gap between those in the cleaning industry and other workers.

Additionally, TCC also recommended that the total number of Workforce Skills Qualifications training modules that cleaners must be trained in be increased to between three and four beyond 2025, up from two currently.

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Together, this will enable more opportunities for the adoption of outcome-based contracts, technology and training of workers for mutually beneficial outcomes, said Jeffrey Chua, TCC co-chair, Singapore National Employers Federation representative.

Besides the cleaning sector, Mr Zainal, who also leads the tripartite committee for security, has plans to review other progressive wage models in security, landscape as well as lift and escalator.

He ended his speech on Monday urging essential service workers in the cleaning industry to keep an open mind and continue to upskill themselves.

"The TCC will continue to make regular reviews to the cleaning PWM to ensure that recommendations remain relevant and beneficial for all stakeholders."