Guest of Honour, NTUC Secretary-General Lim Swee Say
NTUC President John de Payva
NTUC Central Committee members
BORA Award winners and family members
Fellow union leaders
Friends
Good evening.
1. Thank you very much for joining us at this year’s Branch Officials Recognition Awards presentation.
2. This year sees a bumper crop of energetic and enthusiastic Award winners – as you saw in the video just shown. 73 Branch Officials from 52 affiliated unions will receive their awards from our Secretary-General shortly. On behalf of the NTUC, I congratulate all our award winners and thank you for your good work and care for our members and workers.
3. You will soon embark on a learning journey to Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City. As leaders, continuous learning is necessary and important. We have to know what is going on on the ground. We also have to know what is happening around us. Then we will have a better understanding of the situation, and will be able to do a better job at leading and caring for our people in practical and effective ways.
4. You are particularly lucky this year. Why? Because if you had gone to Vietnam say 2 or 3 years ago, the main learning points will be about their fast developing economy and their young, ambitious workforce. This time round, you will see an additional aspect. Vietnam, like so many countries worldwide, is experiencing high inflation. Their inflation rate is 25%. You will see how such a high rate of inflation is affecting their economy and the lives of their people, and what measures they are taking to deal with the challenge.
5. As union leaders, you are certainly very conscious of the need to secure economic benefit for members and workers and help them deal with economic challenges. You want workers’ earnings, working conditions and prospects to improve from year to year, and for living standards to go up. That is why industrial relations, skills training and job re-creation are core to our work. That is why you want the NTUC Social Enterprises to do well so that they can do more good. You know that the better we are at doing so in a win-win give-and-gain, the more members will benefit. And the more members benefit, the more attractive will union membership become. I believe you will come away from this journey to Vietnam with an even better awareness of the critical need to manage inflation and spur competitiveness and growth. That is how to sustain prospects and economic gain for our workers’ future.
6. At the same time, you will feel even more deeply about caring for members. Challenging times are good opportunities to connect emotionally with our members. Yes, people join the union for the economic benefits. But people stay because of the ties that they feel toward each other. People contribute and serve because they see the meaning and purpose of doing so. The more emotional capital we build up in our union and membership networks, the stronger will the Labour Movement be. You are fine examples of people who know how to make that connection and bring the community together and to life. This is a vital quality that you must do your best to nurture, teach and transmit.
7. And even as you do so, we must certainly remember to pay tribute to your spouses and family members. Union work takes a lot of effort and perseverance. The support of our families makes a world of difference to our willingness to do and our ability to sustain. Thank you, family members, for supplying this emotional energy to our Award winners, so that they could do good work for their fellow workers!
Together, let us do our best and more!
