In the last two articles, we discussed the difference between employment and contract arrangements — and why the label you put on a working relationship does not always determine how it is treated in law.
Singapore took that question one step further in January 2025, with the commencement of the Platform Workers Act. For the first time, a category of workers who are not employees now has legally mandated protections — CPF contributions, work injury coverage, and the right to collective representation.
If you work with gig platforms or engage self-employed workers, it is worth understanding what changed and why.
What Is the Platform Workers Act?
The Platform Workers Act came into effect on 1 January 2025. It implements recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Platform Workers, and introduces new protections specifically for workers on digital platforms — think Grab, Foodpanda, Lalamove, and Ryde.
Platform workers remain self-employed. They are not employees under the Employment Act. But the Act recognises that their working arrangements — where an algorithm controls task allocation, pricing, and performance — sit in a grey area that the existing contractor framework did not adequately address.
The result is a third category: workers who are self-employed in legal terms, but who now have protections that previously only employees enjoyed.
Who Does the Act Apply To?
The Act applies to platform operators — companies that provide ride-hail or delivery services and exercise management control over platform workers.
MOM defines management control as meeting both of the following conditions:
Condition 1 — Automated decision-making over any of the following:
- Whether platform workers can provide the service
- What tasks platform workers may perform
- How much to pay platform workers for each task
Condition 2 — Imposing any restrictions or requirements such as:
- Rules on how or when the service is to be provided
- Preventing workers from negotiating fees with service users
- Preventing workers from establishing their own client base
- Restricting workers’ choice of hours or number of tasks
- Offering incentives or imposing penalties on workers’ performance
If your business meets both conditions, you are a platform operator under the Act — and you have new obligations from 1 January 2025.
Three New Obligations for Platform Operators
1. Work Injury Compensation
Platform workers are now entitled to the same scope and level of work injury compensation as employees under the Work Injury Compensation Act (WICA). Previously, a delivery rider injured on the job had no statutory protection — it was treated as a self-employed person’s personal risk. That has changed.
2. CPF Contributions
Platform operators are now required to deduct CPF contributions from platform workers’ earnings and submit them to CPF Board monthly. The rules differ based on the worker’s age:
| Worker Born | CPF Requirement | Accounts Covered |
|---|---|---|
| On/after 1 Jan 1995 | Mandatory — rates increasing until aligned with employee rates | Ordinary, Special, MediSave |
| Before 1 Jan 1995 | Optional — worker can opt in | Ordinary, Special, MediSave (if opt in); MediSave only (if not) |
To ease the impact of higher CPF deductions on take-home pay, the government introduced the Platform Workers CPF Transition Support (PCTS) scheme for eligible Singapore citizens earning net platform income of no more than $3,000/month:
| Year | Cash Support |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 100% offset of the worker’s increased CPF share |
| 2026 | 75% |
| 2027 | 50% |
| 2028 | 25% |
3. Representation Rights
Platform workers can now form platform work associations and negotiate with platform operators on working conditions and disputes — similar in concept to trade unions for employees.
What This Means If You Are Not a Platform Operator
The Platform Workers Act is specifically targeted at ride-hail and delivery platforms. If your business is not one of those, you are not a platform operator under this Act.
But the law signals something broader: Singapore is actively watching arrangements where workers look and function like employees but are classified as contractors. The Platform Workers Act was created precisely because the old contractor framework did not reflect the reality of how those workers were engaged.
If you use freelancers, project-based contractors, or outsourced workers in your own business, the same question applies: does the arrangement genuinely reflect a contractor relationship, or has it evolved into something that resembles employment?
The Platform Workers Act will not be the last word on this. As the gig economy grows, the line between contractor and employee is being redrawn — not just for platform workers, but for working arrangements of all kinds.
A Quick Self-Check
If you run a platform or use automated systems to manage a workforce:
- Do you provide ride-hail or delivery services and exercise management control over workers?
- Have you notified MOM that you are a platform operator?
- Are you deducting and submitting CPF contributions for your platform workers?
- Are you providing work injury compensation coverage?
If you use self-employed workers outside of a platform model:
- Has the arrangement evolved to where you are directing how they work, not just what they deliver?
- Does the working relationship still genuinely reflect a Contract for Service?
Singapore’s approach to platform workers reflects a broader shift: the classification of workers is being looked at more carefully, and arrangements that fall into grey areas are no longer automatically treated as contractor relationships. Understanding where your workforce sits is becoming more important — not less.
