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Mr Speaker Sir, Budget 2020 is a strategic budget; One that not only addresses the short-term concerns of our workers and businesses, but also invests in the long term economic transformation and growth of Singapore.
Impact of COVID-19
The theme of this year’s Budget: Advancing as One Singapore reminds us that when we work as One, we can overcome any challenges. Our frontline workers who have been working tirelessly around the clock in our fight against COVID-19, and the many ground up initiative and responses from the community rallying behind them, embody the strong Singapore Spirit that will see us through this challenging period. To our doctors, nurses and healthcare workers, our cleaning and security personnel, public officers and all other frontline workers – thank you for working tirelessly to keep Singaporeans and Singapore safe through this COVID-19 period.
While the impact of COVID-19 is most acutely felt in sectors like retail, tourism and hospitality, the prolonged shutdown of factories in China has disrupted supply chains around the world, and the manufacturing sector here in Singapore is not spared from such an impact. The manufacturing and service sectors are also facing a manpower squeeze as many workers from Chinese are unable to return to Singapore yet for work. This adds extra pressure on our already tight labour market.
As the Deputy Sec-Gen of NTUC and the Executive Secretary of Metal Industries Workers’ Union, I get feedback from our management partners that for companies with supply chains linked to China factories, there have been a reduction in the demand of their products by up to about 20%. Some might experience greater drop in demand. Some manufacturing companies have started to reduce or freeze workers’ overtime hours while others are planning for a shorter work week if the situation in China does not improve.
While support measures have been extended to sectors which are most immediately affected by COVID-19, I hope that the Government can pay special attention to sectors that may feel the downstream ripple effects of COVID-19 especially if the situation is protracted.
Turning a crisis into an opportunity for transformation and training of workers
Sir, the Stabilisation and Support Package brings relief to the cashflow of companies and helps them cope with the impact of COVID-19 through a combination of rental waivers, tax reliefs and bridging loans. Manpower costs are also a significant expenditure for companies and the wage support measures that are announced during this period will help companies to “cut costs to save jobs” instead of “cutting jobs to save costs”. This is well received by many of my Union leaders and workers who told me that while they are worried about the impact of COVID-19 on their job security, they are thankful that the Jobs Support Scheme and the Wage Credit Scheme will help enterprises retain their workers and protect the jobs that they have. Protecting the jobs of our workers will also allow our companies to retain their manpower capabilities so they can respond swiftly when the DORSCON level normalises and the economy picks up again.
During a downturn when the volume of work is reduced, the enhanced Enterprise Development Grant (EDG) and the newly announced SkillsFuture Enterprise Credit can help companies to redesign jobs, upskill their workers and look at long term business transformation so that when economic recovery occurs, companies will be able to swiftly respond and capture new opportunities. These two points are worth emphasising and the Labour Movement supports the measures in the Stabilisation and Support Package.
Our unions have been working closely with their management partners over the last few weeks to see how best they can utilise the downtime to reskill their workers, especially those whose jobs have been impacted by COVID-19.
One such example is Copthorne King’s Hotel. Working with Food Drinks and Allied Workers Union, the FDAWU, the hotel’s General Manager, Mr Kung Teong Wah, saw value in tapping on the Hotel Job Redesign Place-and-Train programme to multi-skill their workers in other job functions so that they can actually be cross-deployed into other departments when there is a shortage of manpower. He even took the initiative to convince General Managers from other hotels within the same group to do likewise in order to avoid asking their workers to go on the mandatory annual leave or to take no-pay leave.
This is just one of the first movers from our unionised companies who is taking the lead to send workers for training during this downturn and I hope that more companies will also seize the opportunity to do so.
However, some companies and workers have expressed difficulties navigating the huge number of courses available for skills training and therefore are unsure of how to select the courses appropriate for their needs. They found it difficult to map the type of training to the specific skills in the skills framework that are promulgated by Skillsfuture Singapore and hope that the training they received could be better recognised by employers as well as the industry towards their career progression. So there is a need for government agencies to work with Tripartite partners as well as HR practitioners to streamline the approach and make the “customer journey” of lifelong learning a much easier one to navigate. This will complement the government’s efforts in providing more SkillsFuture Credits at the individual and enterprise levels. For companies that are keen to train their workers but are unable to find courses, due to training gaps, currently available in the industry, NTUC LearningHub stands ready to work with companies to bridge the gap and to strengthen training in the respective sectors.
In coping with COVID-19, many companies have also implemented their Business Continuity Plans or BCPs. Many have split team arrangements to minimise the risks of community spread while ensuring operational continuity. So in place of face to face meetings or discussions, the teams now meet virtually over their smart phones or laptops. Companies can therefore take this opportunity to help these workers transit and become more digitally confident, and at the same time, use this as impetus to accelerate the digital transformation of their business processes. Through the use of technology and job redesign, flexi-work arrangements for certain job roles can indeed be a more permanent arrangement to save on operating costs like office rental and utilities while providing the opportunity for employees to remain productive and empowered to manage their time flexibly. This can also meet the needs of many working mothers to balance their needs of their childcare needs and career aspirations while contributing positively to our labour force. So it is in a crisis where we must make full use of it, to transform even faster.
Operations Technology Roadmapping to Help Companies Transform
In coping with the near term challenges brought about by COVID-19, our companies should therefore not forget about the long-term goal of growing and expanding their businesses through deeper industry transformation. The Labor Movement has been advocating for the formation of Company Training Committees or CTCs, to help drive companies’ transformation. As shared by NTUC Sec-Gen, Minister Ng Chee Meng earlier, to date we have 352 companies that have formed CTCs across the various industry clusters. Allow me to share a little more about this.
NTUC has also, in this process, partnered A*STAR to train a group of 28 Industry Training Officers or ITOs, to conduct the Operations Technology Roadmapping or OTR process, through the CTCs as a platform in which the process can run. This helps our companies to systematically map out the process of using technology, process change, work redesign and workers’ training to turn their strategic business objectives into concrete, tangible, actionable items.
Some CTCs have already completed the OTR process and are pushing ahead with their transformation. Let me share an example. Energizer, a unionised company, a household name, under the United Workers of Electronics & Electrical Industries or UWEEI for short, is one such example. The US-based multinational corporation (MNC) has over 500 workers in their branch here in Singapore and they were looking to increase its productivity, optimise its resources and manpower, as well as upskill their workers. So the company embarked on the OTR process in September last year, and within a month, completed the entire process. Our Union Leader, Sister Sukartini, who’s the branch chair of UWEEI in Energizer, was involved in the whole OTR process. And because she was able to give critical inputs on workers’ concerns and understanding of the ground situation, this has helped the company’s management identify gaps and blind spots in the roadmap. And the OTR process has certainly helped Energizer to identify transformation priorities and action plans. The CTC will be the platform for regular tracking of their transformation objectives.
But apart from MNCs, SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) are also leveraging on the CTC platform and OTR process to systematically transform their businesses. Fong’s Engineering (Fong’s), is an SME unionised under the Metal Industries Workers' Union and I have shared in previous Budget speeches before, how Fong’s has embraced innovation and business model transformation very much early on to help keep themselves ahead of the competition. While having done their own company planning previously, Fong’s still chose to undertake the OTR process in November last year. The aim is to re-evaluate the relevance of their previous transformation plans. And through this OTR process, Fong’s managed to pinpoint some blind spots in their current transformation plan that needed further in-depth analysis, identified additional talent and training needs and updated their transformation plan to move even more decisively for the next two years ahead! So whether you’re a multi-national or an SME, let me encourage all our companies to work with our Labour Movement, via the CTC platform, to hasten and deepen your transformation.
Through the CTCs, the unions work closely with the companies and relevant agencies in the government to tap on the various support measures and resources to make the company’s transformation and the workers’ training a reality. The enhanced EDG and the SkillsFuture Enterprise Credit announced in this Budget will provide useful funding resources to this Tripartite effort to catalyse industry transformation.
Mr Speaker, in Mandarin please.
在工作量减少的低迷时期，《企业发展补助配套》（EDG）和新宣布的《技能创前程企业补助》可以帮助公司重新设计工作，提高其工人的技能，并着眼于业务转型，以便在经济复苏时，公司将能够迅速做出反应，并抓住新的契机。在过去的几周，职工总会一直与管理伙伴紧密合作，协商如何最好地利用停机时间，提高工友的技能。
市面上众多的技能提升培训课程， 可说是“百花齐放”。但是，在这“百花争鸣”的情况之下，一些公司和工友在浏览大量可用于技能培训的课程时，却不知如何选择适合其需求的课程。 他们发现很难将培训的课程，映射到Skillsfuture Singapore的特定技能框架，并希望雇主和整个行业能够更好地认可他们所接受的培训，以促进职业发展。 政府机构需要与劳资政合作伙伴和人力资源专业人士合作，以简化技能框架与课程的配对，并使终身学习的“客户旅程”更容易驾驭。 这将更能符合政府在个人和企业级别提供更多《技能创前程补助》的努力。
为了应对冠状病毒疫情对公司运作的风险，许多公司实施了《业务连续性措施》，采用了分组运行的工作安排，让一部分的员工通过笔记本电脑和互联网远程办公。公司可以借此机会，帮助这些员工对运用数码科技更加有自信，同时加速它们业务流程的数字化过程。 通过用科技，技术和重新设计工作，某些工作岗位的灵活性工作安排，确实可以是一种更永久性的安排。这不但可以节省办公楼租金和水电费等运营成本，同时也可以让许多在职父母，更好地平衡他们育儿和工作方面的需求，鼓励更多国人为我们的劳动力做出更加积极的贡献。我希望企业和工友们，能够利用这场危机所带来的推动力， 加深与加快我们产业的转型。
工运承诺与政府和雇主们紧密合作，群策群力，一同为新加坡建设一个更美好的未来。
Conclusion
Mr Speaker, this year’s Budget builds on the previous year’s efforts to upskill our workforce and transform our industries while providing crucial help for our workers, our enterprises and our economy to get through the challenges posed by COVID-19. The Labour Movement stands ready to work with the Government and our Employers to Advance as One Singapore and build a stronger and better future for Singapore.
I support this Budget, thank you!
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