Legislating for Platform Workers: How Singapore Broke the Gig Work Deadlock?
In recent months, the plight of platform workers—epitomised by delivery riders—has once again captured public attention, from the sudden death of Hangzhou’s “order king” to a rider kneeling before a security guard. Over the past decade or so, the platform economy has spread rapidly around the world, and in China it has become an industry intimately woven into the fabric of daily urban life. Yet alongside this growth, platform workers have found themselves trapped in a cycle of low wages, minimal benefits and a dearth of labour protections. Against this backdrop, Singapore’s Platform Workers Bill is widely regarded as a milestone that could offer valuable lessons for China and other nations seeking to address labour protection challenges in the platform economy.
I. It All Began with a Short Film
In late August 2021, then Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong screened the film—titled Kejar, meaning “to chase” or “to catch up” in Malay—at his annual National Day Rally.
The film documents a young rider’s race against the algorithm over the course of a single day, dashing from one order to the next. Along the way, a barking dog startles him and his food drops to the ground; his delivery bag is too small; and he stops to help a fellow rider repair a broken-down motorcycle. In the end, he falls one delivery short of the day’s target of thirty orders and misses out on a 90-Singapore-dollar bonus (equivalent to around 488 Chinese yuan).
Lee Hsien Loong used the film as a springboard to voice his concern for low-income workers, platform workers among them. “They work for platforms such as Foodpanda, GrabFood and Deliveroo. We always see them day and night delivering our meals, especially during the pandemic. It is hard work, and most of them do not earn a lot.”
This was during the worst of the Delta variant’s spread. The pandemic had already pushed Singapore’s economy in 2020 into its sharpest contraction since independence in 1965, with unemployment hitting a ten-year high.
The National Day Rally is part of Singapore’s annual Independence Day celebrations. Since the first anniversary of independence, the Prime Minister has delivered an address each year on the challenges facing the nation, the economic outlook and future plans—a tradition roughly equivalent to the United States’ State of the Union address. The 2020 rally was cancelled due to the pandemic. A year later, amid a series of challenges, Lee Hsien Loong touched on low-wage workers and outlined steps to raise their incomes—beyond emergency aid during the pandemic, they needed systematic support to achieve lasting income growth.
He specifically pointed out that riders are, in effect, employees, yet because they have no employment contract with the platform, they lack the basic work protections most workers enjoy, such as Work Injury Compensation, the right to form unions, and employer contributions to the Central Provident Fund (CPF). Meanwhile, a growing number of Singaporeans were taking on this type of work. “The Ministry of Manpower is looking into these issues and will conduct consultations. We must address these problems to give these workers a more secure future,” he said.
Given the convenience of eating out and the relatively high labour costs, Singapore’s food delivery industry had not grown particularly fast before the pandemic. According to the data platform Statista, however, total revenue for food delivery and grocery express services in Singapore surged by 68.8% and 40.9% respectively in 2020, both record highs.
A consumer survey published by Deliveroo in October 2022 found that the pandemic had led Singaporeans to “embrace” food delivery. Sixty per cent said they now used delivery services more frequently than before the pandemic, while 70% reported using them at least once a week.
Singapore is home to over a dozen ride-hailing and food delivery platforms employing more than 70,000 workers in total—a figure that briefly exceeded 80,000 in 2022 before falling back. This represents roughly 3% of the local workforce. More than half of these platform workers are over 50 and have no tertiary education. Their median monthly income in 2021 was 1,500 Singapore dollars (around 8,128 Chinese yuan), compared with the national median of approximately 5,200 Singapore dollars (around 28,178 Chinese yuan).
In 2022, the Institute of Policy Studies at the National University of Singapore surveyed nearly 1,000 platform workers and found that 94% reported experiencing considerable financial pressure, while 84% worried they would not save enough for retirement.
Between 2021 and 2022, five delivery platform workers were killed in road traffic accidents. Of twelve platform workers interviewed by Channel NewsAsia in July 2022, only one said she or he had never been involved in an accident or a near miss. The major platforms—GrabFood, Foodpanda and Deliveroo—do provide riders with insurance, but do not provide other basic benefits.
The director of Kejar, Mohammad Ruzhael bin Marwazi, was only twenty years old in 2021 and a second-year student at ITE College Central, specialising in filmmaking. He had registered as a rider on his eighteenth birthday, hoping to supplement his family’s income just as his elder brother had. Likewise, many of his friends who helped with acting and production had their own delivery experiences.
In an interview with The Straits Times after winning an award for the film, Ruzhael said the pandemic had changed people’s perception of delivery riders, elevating them to “heroes who serve the community”. “But many people don’t really understand the hardships they go through,” he said. “So I wanted to show those hardships and be a force for change.”
At the 2021 National Day Rally, Lee Hsien Loong argued that raising the incomes of low-wage workers required effort from all sides—workers upgrading their own skills, support from the government and employers, and a contribution from consumers. “As consumers, we too must do our part by paying a little more for the things we enjoy,” he said.
II. Towards a More Secure Future
Under Singapore’s existing legislation, between 8% and 10.5% of a platform worker’s income is mandatorily deposited into a MediSave account, while platforms are not required to make any contributions towards their retirement, healthcare or housing funds.
From a work-injury perspective, platform workers spend a great deal of time on the road and face a higher risk of accidents, yet lack the financial support to sustain themselves after an injury.
Moreover, because platform workers are not classified as employees, they have no right to form a trade union and therefore lack an effective mechanism for collective bargaining or dispute resolution.
The committee promptly opened a public consultation and engaged with consumers, platform workers and platform companies. In August 2022, on the committee’s recommendation, the government, the Singapore Business Federation, platform companies and union representatives established the Tripartite Working Group on Platform Workers.
“Tripartism” is a distinctive labour-relations mechanism shaped by the People’s Action Party’s long tenure in government. Before the early 1960s, Singapore was plagued by political instability, high unemployment, frequent strikes and social unrest, with labour-management relations defined by confrontation. In 1972, after independence, Singapore established its inaugural tripartite institution—the National Wages Council (NWC)—bringing government, employers and workers together to formulate wage guidelines, promote orderly wage growth and prevent pay disputes that might derail industrialisation.
Once the Tripartite Working Group on Platform Workers was set up, it began convening the various parties for consultations and, the following year, put forward a package of legislative recommendations, including the process for authorising a platform worker representative body, the scope of negotiations and the drafting of formal agreements, and mechanisms for resolving disagreements. Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower accepted these recommendations earlier this year.
III. Passage of the Platform Workers Bill
The Bill notes that platforms exercise a degree of managerial control over workers, and that the relationship between platforms and their workers differs from both traditional employment and freelance work. Accordingly, a new worker category—platform worker—has been created within the existing framework.
The Bill requires platform workers born on or after 1 January 1995 to make mandatory contributions to the Central Provident Fund (CPF); those born before that date, who may already have their own housing and retirement plans, may opt in voluntarily. CPF contribution rates for both platform workers and their employers will increase gradually until they match the levels currently applicable to salaried employees and their employers. The government will also establish the Platform Workers CPF Transition Support Scheme to partially offset the reduction in take-home pay that CPF contributions entail for platform workers.
At the same time, platforms will be required to provide workers with Work Injury Compensation insurance on the same terms as those afforded to employees, and both parties will bear a duty to prevent workplace accidents. Workers injured in the course of their duties may claim compensation—including reimbursement of medical expenses, coverage for lost income during sick leave, and a lump-sum payment in the event of disability or death. If a rider delivers for multiple platforms simultaneously, those platforms will share liability for compensation.
To safeguard the health and safety of platform workers, the Ministry of Manpower and the Workplace Safety and Health Council are working with the platform industry to develop a set of basic safety and health operating guidelines, with a public consultation scheduled for September.
The Bill also mandates the establishment of a Platform Work Association to represent platform workers in negotiations with platforms. The Ministry of Manpower will appoint officials to regulate and oversee the activities of such associations.
The Bill states that the enactment of The Platform Workers Bill is intended to strengthen the social contract—a contract in which everyone, from platform operators to platform workers to consumers, plays a part in supporting the protection of platform workers.
Singapore’s new Prime Minister, Lawrence Wong, wrote on Facebook that day: “This success comes from our strong system of tripartism. Together, we have developed a framework that benefits both workers and businesses. By preserving the flexibility that platform work offers while ensuring fair treatment, we have taken an important step in our ongoing effort to strengthen the social contract.”
The value of Singapore’s Platform Workers Bill lies in its attempt to tackle the challenges of labour protection in the platform economy through specific provisions and regulatory frameworks—for example, how to define the employment relationship between a platform and its workers, how to prevent platforms from passing costs on to workers, how to determine the scope of Work Injury Compensation for platform work, and how to give platform workers a greater say on algorithmic transparency.
However, Singapore’s Platform Workers Bill cannot be treated as a ready-made answer to these same challenges in China. For instance, Koh Poh Koon, Senior Minister of State at the Ministry of Manpower, has argued that by ensuring both consumers and workers retain the right to switch platforms, competition among platforms will act as a check against the passing of costs on to workers. Yet China’s food delivery market is moving towards monopoly, and such a mechanism may not prove equally effective. Similarly, China’s platform workers are highly mobile: when faced with serious illness, most choose to return to their registered place of domicile for treatment, which makes them reluctant to enrol in urban medical insurance schemes.
If we are to advance the protection of platform workers around the world in a constructive spirit, there are many such details that still need to be examined and weighed within the specific social conditions of China and other countries. But there is no doubt that, as one of the first countries in the world to establish dedicated legal protections for platform workers, Singapore’s Platform Workers Bill offers us highly valuable reference points and inspiration.
Editor: Yuyang