Introduction
Mr. Deputy Speaker, creating a family-friendly Singapore goes beyond policy; just as navigating family relations successfully and harmoniously requires practical, every-day solutions, family-friendly policies need to be pragmatic, empathetic, and offers solutions that benefit and support everyone in the family ecosystem — this includes working parents, single parents, grandparents, caregivers, and employers.
The Labour Movement and the NTUC Women’s Committee have long championed a Singapore that supports families, advocating for workplace policies that balance career and caregiving responsibilities. Navigating the workplace successfully, charting out happy plans for the family, and reaching for our own personal North Stars are age-old perennial Singaporean aspirations, and is something that the NTUC and this house have worked hard to enable and equip Singaporeans to achieve. While we’ve made significant strides, including stronger workplace fairness laws, improved flexible work arrangements, enhanced caregiver support, there is still much work to be done.
A recently concluded Marriage and Parenthood Survey, conducted by the NTUC Women and Family Unit and PAP Women’s Wing from December 2024 to January 2025 with 1,048 respondents, revealed key actions we can take to encourage childbearing. The top priorities identified were (a) prioritising flexible work arrangements for parents (77.6%), (b) improving access to affordable childcare and healthcare services (74.0%), and (c) increasing financial assistance and subsidies for families (72.2%). While we will release the full survey results nearer our International Women’s Day (IWD) celebrations, these early findings highlight the collective voices of workers, and the continued need to carry on our advocacy to ease financial burdens, improve work-life balance, and provide accessible support systems to foster greater family growth.
Leveraging Flexible Work Arrangements to Support Families
The Labour Movement has been advocating for flexible work arrangements (FWAs) since the 1990s and caregivers have shared that FWAs are their most preferred form of support in balancing work and caregiving. The launch of the Tripartite Guidelines on Flexible Work Arrangement Requests (TG-FWAR) in April 2024 is a significant milestone in this effort. These guidelines are designed to address the fact that every caregiver’s needs are unique, and that these needs may evolve depending on job requirements and business realities.
As a Co-Chair to the TG-FWAR Tripartite Workgroup, the NTUC not only played an instrumental role in drafting the TG-FWAR but also collaborated with industry partners and employers to publish briefing papers on FWAs, offering actionable insights to help employers implement these arrangements effectively and more importantly, sustainably. To this end, with more than 70 per cent of Singapore companies already offering one form of FWAs, the focus going forward must be to normalise FWAs and the requests for FWAs.
FWAs must be sustainable and create win-win outcomes for both employers and employees alike. We call on our employers to continue their implementation of progressive and fair FWA practices in line with the Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices (TG-FEP). Such practices would include setting up clear outcomes-based KPIs for employees, implementing more frequent and regular check-ins with staff, and upskilling/equipping HR personnel with current FWA practices. We, too, call on the Government to provide more resources to progressive employers, especially lesser resourced SMEs on implementing such programmes and policies.
A Comprehensive Ecosystem of Support for Families
Mr. Deputy Speaker, it is not surprising that our Marriage and Parenthood survey respondents spoke about the importance of affordable childcare and healthcare services. FWAs and Workplace Fairness practices form just a part of a broader caregiving ecosystem. Other initiatives, such as parental leave, and caregiving support such as childcare services, trusted helpers at home, complete this ecosystem of comprehensive support for women and their families.
A Union sister summed up the sentiments of the working mum best: “It is not that women do not want to return to work after a having a child. Many women can in fact, strike a good balance between family and work. However, what women need is peace of mind when they are back in the workplace, and the very thing that will cause a woman to give up her career is the absence of a trusted network of care for her children”.
The NTUC is no stranger to this sentiment, and a needle-moving move that the NTUC made in the 1970s was to create an island-wide network of childcare centres to provide that exact peace of mind to mothers when they return to work. This network of childcare centres would be later known as My First Skool, and today My First Skool continues to provide affordable childcare, supporting mothers returning to the workforce.
Many mothers also rely on their domestic helpers to provide trusted support at home to care for their children while they are out at work. The NTUC Women’s Committee noted that first-time employers of Migrant Domestic Workers (MDWs) often need help in navigating the complexities of employer-helper relations, and to support our mothers, we launched a new initiative in 2024, Getting To-Gather: Power of Women. This initiative brings together resources and partners, such as the Association of Employment Agencies (AEAS) and the NTUC’s Centre for Domestic Employees (CDE) to strengthen relations between caregivers and their MDWs via fun care-carnivals and awards recognising good relations between MDWs and their employers. Feedback from our mothers (and fathers) is that this initiative has proven to be effective in fostering trust and understanding, and we call on the government to provide more resources to employers of MDWs in this respect.
In 2012, the Labour Movement called on the Government to introduce two weeks of paid paternity leave, and today, we see that evolve into four weeks. The new shared parental leave scheme offers parents the flexibility to decide how to share their parental leave—something the Labour Movement has long championed. This flexibility ensures that parents can make the best decisions for their families and we thank the Government for heeding our workers’ call for shared and enhanced parental leave.
While we have made significant strides, there is still much more to be done. SME employers with less resourcing often struggle to find temporary replacements when their staff go on parental leave. This burden frequently falls on other colleagues, and this can be overwhelming, especially in smaller teams. SME owners may also face financial strain when reimbursing employees for parental leave. With SMEs employing up to 70 per cent of the Singaporean workforce, I urge the Government to explore solutions that will support SMEs in this area so that employees can take parental leave with the peace of mind that their jobs remain secure.
Mr. Deputy Speaker, the Labour Movement supports the recent initiative by the Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA) to introduce eight official days for childcare centre closures that do not coincide with public holidays and we recognise that this is a positive step to improve the welfare of our childcare teachers and administrators (many who are parents themselves). While we understand that both parents can take turns to share childcare responsibilities for these eight days of closure, we also recognise that young children tend to fall sick often, or just have their off-days. We call on the Government to monitor feedback on whether the current provision of six days of Government-Paid Childcare Leave remains sufficient, vis-a-vis the accessibility and utilisation of FWAs to meet our growing childcare needs.
Increasing Workplace Support for Breastfeeding Mothers
In modern day Singapore, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the lack of workplace support or facilities should never be a factor for a mother who chooses to breastfeed. While majority of employers we speak with have provisioned for adequate lactation spaces, we still hear from the ground, women who have to use toilet cubicles to express breastmilk, or to store their expressed milk in communal fridges, next to someone’s salad or packed lunch. It is with this, that the NTUC Women and Family Unit implemented the Better Workplace Programme to support progressive family-friendly employers with lactation and wellness spaces for employees. This programme comes as an extension of our 2013 Project Gold initiative that helped to raise awareness of the needs of breastfeeding mothers in the workplace. I would like to call for the government to support SMEs in creating more conducive workspaces for lactating mothers, and to co-create, with the Labour Movement, wellness programmes for lactating mothers in the workplace.
Deepening Support for Return-to-Work Mothers
Our survey respondents also spoke about the financial pressures they face while raising a family and have indicated that they hope for more financial assistance and subsidies for families. I believe that this would need to be taken with the view of providing more employment opportunities for return-to-work mothers, or mothers entering the workforce for the first time. This would allow for sustainable long-term financial independence instead of dependency on government subsidies alone. In view of this, the NTUC Women and Family unit introduced the C U Back @ Work (CUB) Programme in 2023, which helps caregivers, especially women, return to work with flexible work arrangements, flexible training schedules, and of course, an attractive pay package. We have close to 1,000 CUBbies in the programme since then, and in 2025, we plan to expand this programme to reach more employers and roles, including PMET ones, making these opportunities available to more return-to-work mothers.
Joanne joined the C U Back @ Work (CUB) Programme on 1st February 2024 after being a stay-at-home mother for over a decade. With caregiving responsibilities for her three children, she found it difficult to re-enter the workforce, especially due to her lack of technical skills. After being referred to the programme through the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF), she appreciated the supportive, pressure-free learning environment and the flexibility to choose her work location. Now, she oversees the environmental cleanliness and upkeep matters for not one, but two banks, and she remains positive about learning and believes that more women could benefit from flexible work arrangements and an empathetic employer.
The combination of flexible work arrangements paired with fair wages and a good career pathway is a winning combo to help women get back into the workforce, in a smooth, dignified fashion. Recently, I have, in my MPS, met with several expectant mothers, who have fallen on tough times. Ms R (not her real name) has two children and is now expecting her third child. She has a troubled marriage and after being thrown out of her home by her soon to be ex-husband, she needs to find work to support her family. She is finding the job hunt process hard, as many employers, fair or otherwise, are concerned about her pregnancy status, and ability to continue with work once she delivers. I would like to ask if there is more that we can do to support expectant mothers like Ms R, and perhaps we can look to more support from the Government to expand our CUB programme to cover expectant mothers like Ms R.
Conclusion
The Labour Movement remains steadfast in our commitment to support working families in Singapore. We will continue to advocate for more family-friendly workplaces, greater flexibility for caregivers, and stronger support for all parents as they balance their work and family responsibilities. With the support of the Tripartite Partnership, I am confident that we can build a future where Singapore families continue to thrive. Mr. Deputy Speaker, I support the bill and I support a Singapore Made for Families. Thank you.
