ANOTHER tripartite committee to advise the main tripartite committee.

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

I think the NTUC is trying very hard to say it is trying very hard to make things better for low wage workers, without quite saying it so plainly. I am just reading news reports on what NTUC chief Lim Swee Say said about the National Wages Council guidelines which called on employers to give workers earning less than $1,000 a month a $60 pay rise.

There seems to be some sort of wrangling on the issue within the NWC, a tripartite body of unionists, employers and the G.

The bone of contention: The unions wanted the $1,000 a month threshold raised to either $1,100 or $1,200. But employers said no. So it was stuck at $1,000 a month, as it has been for the past two years. In fact, unionists say that employers did not even want the minimum sum of $60 specified, but I suppose the unionists got their way.

You know, NWC is supposed to work by “tripartite consensus’’, going by what its own website says. But it seems one arm is unhappy enough to disclose some of these closed-door details of negotiations. ST said that the employers’ federation was asked for a response but none was forthcoming. I can think of many responses – and I don’t have to be an employer to trot out them: Like how manpower costs have gone up because of the squeeze on foreign manpower; productivity while up, is still in negative territory, other costs of doing business, such as utilities and rent, have gone up and the economy is still not powering ahead fast enough.

The original NWC press statement highlighted this line: http://berthahenson.wordpress.com/20...on-in-the-nwc/


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