Singapore Government accepts recommendations by Advisory Committee on Platform Workers to strengthen protections for platform workers

20 December 2022

On 23 November 2022, the Ministry for Manpower (“MOM”) announced that the Singapore Government has accepted all 12 recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Platform Workers (“Committee”) to strengthen protections for platform workers.

The Committee was convened in September 2021 to look into strengthening protections for platform workers in three areas of concern:

  • Ensuring adequate financial protection in case of work injury
  • Improving housing and retirement adequacy
  • Enhancing representation

The term “platform workers” refers to delivery workers, private-hire car drivers and taxi drivers who use online platforms to match them with demand for their delivery and point-to-point transport services, but who are not employees of the companies operating these platforms.

Implementation timeline

The Government expects implementation to commence from the later part of 2024 at the earliest. The moves will require legislative changes and will be implemented in a progressive manner to manage the impact on all stakeholders in the platform ecosystem. The Government will announce the implementation details and timeline in the coming months.

Recommendations

The following is a summary of the Committee’s recommendations:

  • Framework for platform workers’ protections
    • Platform workers should not be classified as employees.
    • Require platform companies that exert a significant level of management control over platform workers to provide them with certain basic protections.
  • Ensuring adequate financial protection for platform workers in case of work injury
    • Require platform companies to provide the same scope and level of work injury compensation as employees’ entitlement under the Work Injury Compensation Act 2019 (“WICA”).
    • Require the platform company that the platform worker was working for at the point of injury to be responsible for compensation, based on the platform worker’s total earnings from the platform sector in which the injury was sustained.
    • Determine sector-specific definitions of when a platform worker is considered “at work”.
    • Retain the strengths of the current WICA regime, including the provision of work injury compensation insurance through the existing open and competitive insurance market.
  • Improving housing and retirement adequacy
    • Align Central Provident Fund (“CPF”) contribution rates of platform companies and platform workers with that of employers and employees respectively for platform workers who are aged below 30 in the first year of implementation.
    • Allow older cohorts of platform workers who are aged 30 and above in the first year of implementation to opt in to the full CPF contribution regime.
    • Require platform companies to collect platform workers’ share of CPF contributions to help workers make timely contributions.
    • Phase in the increased CPF contributions over five years, unless major economic disruption warrants a longer timeline. To ease the impact, the Government may wish to consider providing support for platform workers and the form this should take.
  • Enhancing representation for platform workers
    • Give platform workers the right to seek formal representation through a new representation framework designed for platform workers.
    • Set up a new Tripartite Workgroup on Representation for Platform Workers to co-create the new representation framework.

Reference materials

The following materials are available on the MOM website www.mom.gov.sg: