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When I was preparing my speech, I was recounting the setup of NTUC’s Job Security Council (JSC). At that time, I brought it as a pilot programme to the government to consider, to effect business and workforce transformation, and finding the best possible way forward to place workers into this pool of opportunities and better work prospects.
That was in January 2020 and was situated as a pilot programme amidst the uncertainties of Industry 4.0 transformation, and upskilling and upgrading the workforce to seize those opportunities. But COVID-19 hit us, and uncertainties of a Pandora’s box was opened, and we’ve never experienced such a crisis in our lives. So, the pilot programme, within two months went into full-swing mode without the necessary testing of various capabilities across the JSC system, including how it can meld into the Company Training Committees that NTUC was pushing before in 2018.
Today the significance of this event is amidst all these uncertainties and largely overcoming COVID-19, but still in the looming shadows of a recession in the geo-economic spheres. We are now building up the JSC with the Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF) through a partnership to enable this mechanism that will hopefully chart the way forward for our working people in Singapore and for our businesses.
So, as I’ve said, in the space of the different happenings in the world today, there are many uncertainties, there are many factors that our government is trying to influence, but ultimately, Singapore is a very small country, and there are many aspects that we are literally price takers. But amidst all these in the macro environment, Singapore is still able to attract businesses to our shores, and able to keep ourselves as a moving economy amidst the challenges. But we must be cognisant that the realities of economic competition and great economic changes are upon our shores. So how can we as tripartite partners do the very best amongst ourselves to ensure that our potential is maximised due to these important challenges?
The JSC when we started in 2020, as I’ve said, it was a pilot programme, but amidst COVID-19, NTUC’s e2i (Employment and Employability Institute) and our partners managed to place more than 60,000 people (Between February 2020 to August 2022) within our ecosystem in the Lift and Place initiative to secure livelihoods in the tumultuous periods of many workers in the past few years. This is just within NTUC, e2i and JSC, while in the larger ecosystem, the government had put in the National Jobs Council, and together, we were able to alleviate the livelihood concerns of many Singaporeans and protect many lives and livelihoods in the past few years.
The JSC is far from perfect, but it works. But we hope that with the MOU today, the partnership with SNEF, with colleagues, and brothers and sisters, we will expand this space and now, to dare to try out different things through the whole JSC ecosystem and the CTCs. One specific area that we're hoping to address beyond NTUC’s traditional influence in the ‘Rank and File’ workers is the needs and aspirations of the PMEs.
In the last 18 months or so, NTUC set up together with SNEF, the PME Taskforce to look at how we can support the PMEs of Singapore better today. The objectives then were simply to identify and address PME’s aspirations and concerns in the workplace, to strengthen their employment and employability, and enable PMEs to compete fairly and more effectively in today's labour market. These recommendations that the PME Taskforce has taken to the government expands 9 recommendations which are formulated after thorough engagement of about 10,000 PMEs and union leaders and employers in the last 18 months or so.
So, moving forward, we really want to see how we can address these PME’s needs and concerns through this NTUC JSC framework. We want now to build upon the foundation layers of the lessons we have learnt during COVID-19 of placing workers into more specific and targeted treatment, to support individual company needs, such as through placement or job redesign. And even through grant support, like the SNEF’s Productivity Solutions Grant or our NTUC’s very own CTC Grant. Bringing forward business transformation, we think that through NTUC’s CTC Grant, we can also uplift workers in terms of skills sets.
The NTUC CTC Grant is a grand total of $70 million available to help businesses in their business transformation and workforce transformation. Now coupled with the potential with the SNEF’s Productivity Solutions Grant that is available to all companies, we hope that employers here amongst us today will know that they are not alone in business transformation. Whether it is through funds, there is support from government, and through SNEF and NTUC. If it is expertise that you are looking at, there’s the Company Training Committees that hopefully your companies have considered, which can provide that little bit of support in Operations and Technology Road mapping for you to re-examine your business model.
So, in summary, this is really the best we can put together for your business end-to-end, to look at the funding, to the business transformation and ultimately through the JSC for workforce transformation.
The employer partners here, I hope you will give this due consideration, leverage these programmes that we have put in place to partner you in both business and workforce transformation. The process in the market that we are operating in is never easy. I can fully empathise with the challenges that employers face today through the pipeline cost pressures, labour shortages, and just simply the heightened competition across all different aspects of the economy and NTUC understands that, and we hope that through this, we can partner you further in your business successes.
Why is NTUC doing that? Well, we have our own workers’ interests as well. Because we need businesses to do well, for us to be able to, in a sustainable way, champion and carry the interests of workers for better wages, better welfare and better work prospects. And NTUC is committed to support employers’ successes for the workers’ successes as well.
I hope that in the translation of the MOU towards implementation numbers, NTUC can help employers start, and better support and strengthen your transformation journey by allowing you better visibility of business transformation opportunities. And at the same time for our workers, better access to these opportunities as well.
Through this better access to opportunities, how can we expand the whole ecosystem? For example, one of the pilot programmes that we have been working with SNEF is to enable young PMEs to have meaningful job opportunities with companies looking to expand into the region. On the one hand, when I interacted with employers, many of you tell me that the young Singaporeans are very reluctant to go overseas, but yet at the same time when I interacted with young students coming into the workforce or young professionals, they tell me they want to go overseas. So I thought that through this pilot with SNEF and NTUC that we are embarking on with a small number of companies, we can explore matching the aspirations of young PMEs with company needs, through companies deploying them overseas.
There are many employer partners that I know personally here, and I hope that you will join this pilot programme for us to enable your businesses and equally important, with the whole of NTUC, to help meet the aspirations of young PMEs to get them overseas and have different work experiences other than in Singapore.
So, you can see that in this MOU, while it is just a few signatures by our brothers and sisters, our ambitions remain to serve the larger workforce and the needs of the workforce that have experience a COVID-19 crisis. But now having some levels of capacity to look at the future needs of workers in tandem with employers’ needs. It's only through this interest-driven convergence between employers and NTUC that we can see a sustainable way to really make the ecosystem flourish.
So, as I speak mostly to the employers here today, I hope that through the NTUC CTC Grant, through the SNEF Productivity Solutions Grant, you will have the assurance and tools for business transformation. Importantly, together with the expertise we bring on the table to help with business transformation, I hope that you will also partner NTUC’s ecosystem to redesign jobs, upskill the workers so that you can really realise the possibilities amidst all the different challenges.
On the one hand, indeed, these are challenges. On the other hand, through our #EverWorkerMatters Conversations and Forward Singapore conversations, many Singaporeans have also identified opportunities for us to seize. But for us to do so, let us pull together the partnerships with employers and workers, and even as common Singaporeans, to leverage all the foundational strengths that Singapore brings, to control the things we can control and deal with all the different challenges that the world is facing. And that will give us the best possibilities of better livelihoods and lives in Singapore. So, for those of you that have not participated in the #EveryWorkerMatters Conversations, I do urge you to join us to look at all the different challenges, aspirations, and potential solutions that we can put together in the next 12 months something to submit, to chart the way forward for a better Singapore.
NTUC and SNEF are happy to be signing this MOU as a step towards building tripartism forwards so that we can continue with our economic model of collaborative engagement between workers, unions and employers to foster this important economic aspect for Singaporeans and Singapore.
I look forward to engaging all the different employers amongst us and turning this MOU into a robust, not only framework, but robust ecosystem, to better businesses and to serve workers of all different categories better in the future.
I look forward to working with all of you. Thank you very much.
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