More details of platform worker protections revealed; new law to be tabled soon
MORE details of upcoming platform-worker protections, such as work injury compensation, were announced by Senior Minister of State for Manpower Koh Poh Koon on Wednesday (Jul 12). Legislation will be tabled in Parliament soon, he added, in line with the previously-announced target of having the measures take effect from the second half of 2024.
In November, Singapore announced that platform workers would be granted employee-like levels of work-injury insurance and contributions to the national Central Provident Fund (CPF) savings scheme. On Wednesday, the government further said platform workers will be allowed to join representative bodies with powers similar to trade unions.
“For all of these things to come to pass, we need to enact new legislation. These strengthened protections will commence sometime in the second half of 2024, so we hope to be able to table this new law to Parliament soon,” said Dr Koh, in his opening speech to a closed-door dialogue between 120 platform workers and industry representatives on Wednesday.
At the session held at the Lifelong Learning Institute in Eunos, he gave updates on details of the new legislation.
For instance, for work-injury compensation purposes, a platform worker will be considered “at work” during the pick-up and drop-off of passengers and items, including when they are heading to their vehicles.
“If you get injured while finishing a delivery and walking back to your vehicle, you can still be covered... Even the process of trying to get to the pick-up point or get to the place of picking up the passenger – that can be still considered ‘at work’,” he said.
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Secondly, compensation from income loss due to work injuries will be based on the worker’s average actual earnings in the last 90 days from the point of the injury, in the relevant sector. “So it’s at least established how far back we look into your average earnings,” said Dr Koh.
This 90-day time frame was not mentioned last November, when the government announced that operators must provide platform workers the same scope and level of work-injury compensation that employees enjoy under the Work Injury Compensation Act.
On the CPF front, the government has been working with platform companies to develop a collection mechanism that is “simple to implement and to use”, he added. The aim is to reduce the load on companies and to make the process seamless for workers.
“It will be aligned with the mechanism to collect CPF for all employees today in general, but (we) attempted to account for the unique features of platform work. And when details are much more ready and scoped out, we will announce them,” he said.
Thanking platform workers for their contributions, Dr Koh said that the upcoming legislation “will have a huge impact on how your industry can develop sustainably”.
Hopeful with some concerns
Platform workers that The Business Times spoke to after Wednesday’s dialogue welcomed the upcoming protections, though some also flagged the need for greater discussion on certain pain points.
A ride-hailing driver for Grab who asked not to be named is optimistic about the measures, especially that of granting platform workers a stronger collective voice to raise concerns.
But she noted that work-injury coverage appears to be limited to when one is “at work”. She expressed concern about the possibility of not getting covered for accidents that happen while waiting for the app to assign new jobs.
A food-delivery rider who wanted to be known only as Lee felt that more dialogue was needed to address grievances specific to delivery riders.
These include unfavourable practices by food-delivery platforms. Riders are sometimes assigned to deliver large loads – such as 20 beverage bottles of 1.5 litres each – on their own, and are not given details of the assignment before they accept it.
“(Sometimes) we reach the vendor and realise that it’s 50 packets of nasi lemak. We have to be there waiting, and we cannot reject the job because we’d already accepted it,” he said, calling on platforms to be more transparent.
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