The Workers’ Party (WP) has called on the government to prioritise pressing economic and employment challenges even as it lays out long-term strategies for Singapore’s future.
In a statement issued on Sunday (17 Aug) following Prime Minister Lawrence Wong’s National Day Rally speech, the opposition party said businesses and workers face immediate pressures that cannot be overlooked.
Source: Lawrence Wong on Facebook
PM Wong had noted that Singapore is entering its next chapter in “a more troubled and turbulent world”, citing geopolitical conflicts and trade barriers that have marked 2025 so far.
Two weeks earlier, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) also cautioned that global economic uncertainty may weigh on hiring and wage growth, particularly in outward-oriented sectors such as financial services, professional services, and transportation and storage.
Against this backdrop, the WP urged the government to “leave no stone unturned” in strengthening Singapore’s economic resilience, including exploring previously untapped solutions.
While acknowledging initiatives such as the Singapore Economic Resilience Taskforce and the upcoming Economic Strategy Review, the WP warned that rising rental costs could undermine the continuity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
It also flagged concerns about skills-related underemployment and Singapore’s slow real income growth of just 0.7% per annum over the past five years.
To address these challenges, the WP reiterated its proposals for JTC Corporation to expand its role in the industrial space market, offering SMEs a wider range of lower-rent options.
It also urged the government to begin publishing regular measures of underemployment, alongside renewed calls for a statutory minimum wage.
On jobs, the WP welcomed the government’s new jobs-matching initiative but pressed for its accelerated implementation, stressing that many job seekers need more than career advice — they need “real opportunities and connections” to employers.
With artificial intelligence (AI) expected to reshape industries, the WP highlighted the risk of Singaporeans being left behind.
It called for stronger alignment between education and workforce needs through collaboration between the Ministries of Education and Manpower.
This would involve industry feedback loops for curriculum design, skills funding, and career guidance.
The party also proposed expanding the number of allied educators to reduce class sizes, giving students more support to develop essential soft skills such as empathy and adaptability — qualities it stressed cannot be replaced by machines.
In addition, the WP repeated its call for stronger social safety nets, including redundancy insurance and mandatory retrenchment benefits for workers in companies with at least 25 employees, to cushion the impact of technological disruption.
On the new government-funded traineeship programme announced by PM Wong, the WP urged that it be designed with proper safeguards to protect participants.
It cautioned that such schemes must not be used by companies as a source of cheap labour, and called for clear performance metrics, workplace protections such as paid sick leave, and a transparent commitment from employers to consider trainees for full-time roles.
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Featured image adapted from The Workers’ Party on Facebook and by MS News.