SINGAPORE, Nov 20 — Between March and September this year, about 250,000 workers have had their wages cut, a report by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) showed.

Ever since MOM required companies with 10 or more employees to notify the ministry if they are going ahead with wage cut measures in March, it has received 7,300 notifications from about 5,000 companies.

The latest employment standards report, which was released yesterday, said that the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (Tafep) worked with 900 of these companies, which employ close to 52,000 workers, to revise their measures because their planned wage cuts were deemed excessive.

MOM said that close to 330 of the employers agreed to review their measures, while the rest could justify the need for those cuts for business survival.

This is the second time the ministry has come up with an employment standards report, which tracks labour disputes on issues such as salary and dismissals.

The first report covered a duration of one year and nine months, while this latest one looked at disputes filed from Jan 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020 and included the impact the Covid-19 pandemic has had on these issues.

Salary disputes

Of the overall employment claims, 13,591 (86 per cent) out of 15,717 claims that were filed were related to wages.

Singapore employees

Number of claims per 1,000 employees in 2019: