Budget Debate Speech by Ng Chee Meng, Secretary-General of NTUC and Member of Parliament for Pasir Ris-Punggol GRC on 26 February 2019

Mr Speaker,
 

The Minister for Finance has announced a budget of $80 billion, that is both pro-business and pro-worker. In particular, Minister Heng paid close attention to workers, not just workers in the generic sense, but workers as real people – the elderly, the unemployed, lower income workers, even our youth who represent the future workforce.

Feedback from our workers on the Budget has been positive. The Merdeka Generation Package, Workfare Income Supplement enhancements and other forms of support reflect a more caring and inclusive society. They appreciate what the Government is doing for them.

 

However, some middle class workers pointed out that they did not feel the benefits as strongly. Some also noted that notwithstanding the disbursements, structural rises in costs of living – water, diesel tax, carbon tax, and the eventual GST rise – would ultimately be passed on to the end users. Some of our workers also wanted to clarify that disbursements such as the Merdeka Generation Package would not burden fut-ure Governments or the workforce. I thought these were very insightful feedback from our workers. 

 

Keeping Workers at the Heart of Everything We Do

 

In short, the Labour Movement appreciates the direction of our Government, and as Secretary-General of NTUC, I urge the Government to continue to put workers at the heart of all we do.

 

NTUC Labour Members of Parliament and many other colleagues in the Chamber today have placed workers at the heart of our debate speeches. They have each addressed the various segments of our workforce and the issues they face – whether they are elderly workers; the low-income workers; workplace safety issues, balancing family with work, training and progression; or all segments of the workforce including freelancers and PMEs. Our vision and purpose in NTUC is a simple one. It is about doing the best we can for every worker.

 

Mr Speaker, this is both the necessary thing to do for our economy and the right thing to do for our society. Our changing demographics mean a tighter labour force in the future and with limited manpower growth, every worker matters. Each worker's skills, knowledge, experience, contribute to our human capital. Our economy can only be at its best when all our workers are performing to their potential and are rewarded fairly for their productivity.

 

Having said that, the Minister for Finance has shared an encouraging statistic – productivity has increased 3.6% in the past three years. This is testament to the efforts of tripartite stakeholders – the Government, businesses and our workers. But even as we have done well, the Labour Movement cannot rest and must look ahead.

 

At these moments of rapid economic change and disruption, I am glad there are also many new opportunities for Singapore and Singaporeans. NTUC will partner our tripartite partners to enable our businesses to seize new opportunities and create wealth so that our workers can aspire to what we, in the Labour Movement call, the 3Ws: better wages, better welfare and better work prospects.

 

At the same time, the Labour Movement is cognizant that some workers in Singapore will feel dislocated by the rapid changes. NTUC will, and must always, do our best to support these workers to keep up. Let me elaborate on how we will manage and balance these multiple objectives.

 

Wages

The heart of the Labour Movement's purpose is for our workers to earn and secure a fair wage. This allows them and their families to keep up with the cost of living, save and flourish. We have no illusions that workers can do well if businesses do not do well. Thriving businesses are good for workers. In this regard, I agree with the Minister for Finance that a company's leadership is key. So, when the boss of a company is ready to seize new opportunities through technology, NTUC wants to partner you and wants to facilitate with the necessary worker training and upskilling.

 

With the economy transforming rapidly, if we are to help our workers upskill effectively, NTUC and our unions must now move upstream to participate in Government and industry-led transformation. This is why NTUC strongly welcomes the impending changes to the terms of Enterprise Singapore's Enterprise Development Grant. For funding to be approved, a company must demonstrate how such initiatives, not only benefits the business, but also provide positive worker outcomes. NTUC and our union leaders are eager to share our experience and expertise with our tripartite partners in ensuring that these outcomes are achieved.

 

I will cite a simple example of what we have done for almost 10 years. NTUC's e2i launched the Inclusive Growth Programme in 2010 as part of NTUC's advocacy for low-wage workers. The programme provides funding for companies' productivity initiatives that translates into actual workers’ wage increments. Brother Norizal bin Zainal, a security supervisor at Temasek Polytechnic, benefited from this. He took part in a project that was looking to allow officers to update information to supervisors through their handphones.

 

This gives security supervisors more mobility and they were able to up their productivity. As a consequent, he enjoyed a $100 increment to his basic salary as a result. Some may think that $100 a month is not so significant an amount, but to many of our workers, this matters a lot.

 

As of December 2018, the IGP has benefitted more than 91,000 workers from 2,000 companies across various sectors: security guards, cleaners, F&B service staff and hotel service staff. In the past five years, the average wage increase per project was around 13%. The successful demonstration of sustainable, productivity-driven wage increases also facilitated the eventual legislation of the Progressive Wage Model (PWM) for lower income sectors. These successes were possible because union leaders and our industrial relations officers acted as critical catalysts. They worked the ground, company by company, to understand specific business needs and operational processes details. They persuaded management that innovation and worker training would be good for business; and encouraged their fellow workers to participate in this upstream work, to support the successes of their bosses so that in turn, they can get better pay. The Labour Movement looks forward to a productive partnership with MTI and Enterprise Singapore on this refined Enterprise Development Grant. 

 

Work Prospects

 

Mr Deputy Speaker, I would now talk about how we can best help workers in securing good employment prospects in our rapidly transforming economy. 

 

Worker 4.0

 

The Labour Movement must act on the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, or Industry 4.0 as mentioned by Minister Heng.

 

For Industry 4.0 to be actualised, we need our workers to transform in parallel with their companies and industries because there can be no Industry 4.0 without the worker. These workers, what we have called and termed "Worker 4.0", go hand in hand with Industry 4.0. Many workers in other countries reject technology – they fear it, they do not understand it and they are worried that technology will take away their rice bowls. Some of our very own workers in Singapore also feel threatened by the unknown and some of the fearmongering online. But we, in Singapore, cannot reject technology. Technology allows us, especially in our context, to overcome many of our labour shortage constraints and if applied intelligently, businesses can be more productive and able to seize many emerging opportunities and create wealth.

 

In the past few months, we worked with companies and sector agencies on a study to produce archetypes of Worker 4.0 in different industries. Why? We want workers to be able to benefit from this transformation and be assured that this is indeed the best for them.

 

Mr Deputy Speaker, with your permission, may I ask the Clerks to distribute a handout to illustrate this Worker 4.0? 

 

     [pamphlet being handed out]

 

When Members get their hands on the pamphlet, you will see that this is a simplified example of what the archetype for Port Engineering Professional 4.0 looks like – the current version, what is the 4.0 version, the skills gap, and the necessary and required training for them to upgrade. Our intention is to help our workers visualise the potential of Industry 4.0 for the companies; and for themselves, for their careers.

 

As part of this study, PSA worked with the Port Officers' Union to develop training programmes for Port Engineering Professional 4.0. When Minister Heng Swee Keat visited PSA over the Lunar New Year period, he may have noticed some automation projects which were on trial. Automation is an important area of productivity growth for PSA in the intense arena of competition for ports. One of our union members and a Senior Mechanical Engineer at PSA, Brother Ng Hwee Sheng, has completed a one-year Systems Engineering course at the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT). With his newly acquired skillsets, he now takes on a larger role managing various automated and intelligent systems. This is part of PSA's scheme in upskilling and multi-skilling their PMEs to be more agile and adaptive to keep value-adding in the long run.

 

With a better vision of Worker 4.0 and examples of fellow workers that have achieved it, we want our workers to make it real for themselves, to know that it is doable that they must take personal responsibility for it. 

 

Company Training Committees

 

Many colleagues in the Chamber today have called for workers’ upskilling and upgrading. As the Secretary-General, I am very grateful for the support this Chamber has for the workers, including Mr Liang Eng Hwa and Ms Foo Mee Har for standing in support of workers' training. NTUC will act to scale this effort. To do so, the Labour Movement will work to set up Training Committees with our partnering companies. These committees, made up of management and union leaders, will work together to articulate what Worker 4.0 looks like for the company and partner management in the transformation towards Industry 4.0. 

 

Some of our companies have already started. PSA is amongst a group of around ten companies in various sectors working with our unions on their Training Committees. For example, in the aviation and aerospace cluster, we have SIA Engineering Company, ST Aerospace, SATS; in energy, we have the SP Group; in transport, we have the SBST, SMRT and so on. In the past, we also have companies that worked with unions on training and wage increments to support the implementation of the Progressive Wage Model (PWM). This provides ready infrastructure for us to push Industry 4.0 and Worker 4.0 outcomes within these companies as well.

 

These Training Committees may have different sounding names and structures. But more importantly, I am concerned about the outcomes and not the form. Whichever the form they may come in, what they have in common is that management and union must sit down together to discuss, plan and execute these very important training programmes for workers. They must share information in a way that facilitates this mutually beneficial initiative.

 

Training Committees harness workers’ expertise to support companies’ business development and investments. Union leaders, by the nature of their work, have a deep understanding of the factory floor and intimate knowledge of ground worker readiness and realities. By harnessing both management and labour expertise, the Training Committee can chart out skills and competency requirements, put in place training programmes such as PSA’s one-year Systems Engineering Course at SIT, schedule workers' training to minimise downtime on ongoing operations. This may seem simple in a speech but it is no trivial matter in our companies' manpower shortage with shiftwork; and when we do all these, it facilitates good outcomes for the workers and the companies. In addition, we can also map out – through the Training Committees – prospects for career progression, incorporating possible jobs of the future and where possible, even tag to wage increments of these future jobs.

 

With these initial pilot programmes and pilot companies, we can already reach out to about 64,000 workers in our unionised companies. Hence in the next phase, we want to scale up further to all our unionised companies. Importantly, we must know that these Training Committees will benefit the businesses and our workers.

 

This may sound easy but in reality, will not be so simple to execute. Nevertheless, it is a needed initiative. The Labour Movement, with our reach to partner unionised companies, can play our part in the Industrial Transformation. It is important to start now, to put many good ideas discussed in this Chamber into practical action; and even if we may not get it 100% right at the first go, well, we will get it right and let us get to the transformation process. 

 

Mr Deputy Speaker, Mandarin, please.

 

工会领袖和工友们跟我说，他们很高兴政府的理念和我们一样，即“工友为本”。

 

在协助企业深化能力并维持竞争优势的同时，也帮助工友在产业转型和数码化 的新时代能拥有更好的薪金、福利和工作前景。更重要的是，当企业有盈利时，和工友分享成果。因此，当工会领袖们听到王瑞杰部长宣布从明年4月起，通过企业发展计划获得津贴转型的企业，必须确保员工也能受惠，如员工加薪，他们都感到非常高兴。

 

在职总 e2i的Inclusive Growth Programme 计划下，自2010年推行以来，帮助超过9万多名工友。通过最近五年的IGP项目，工友薪金平均增长了大概百分之十三。职总期待与贸工部和新加坡企业发展局合作，以工友为本，使企业发展计划即 亲商也亲工友。

 

职总一直秉持的信念是：工友最好的福利是一份好工作。

 

随着科技的迅速发展，工业4.0时代已经来临了。但是工业4.0如果没有工友4.0便不成型。除了协助企业利用智能科技发挥最大优势，保持竞争力；同样重要的是帮助工友接受和运用科技，发挥自己最大的潜能，在工业4.0中游刃有余。

 

工友4.0到底具备什么样的技能和特征呢？应该接受什么样的培训才能成为工友4.0呢？

 

职总在过去几个月和数家在不同领域的企业和相关合作伙伴探讨工友4.0的楷模。敲定楷模后，下一步是在企业成立培训委员会，落实培训计划，帮助工友接受培训，提升技能，成为工友4.0。

 

在这个瞬息万变的时代，企业创新和转型刻不容缓。同样地，工友也必须能迅速适应并把握机遇。今年财政预算案的主题是：建立强盛和团结的新加坡。

 

Renewal of Compact

 

Mr Deputy Speaker, I will conclude. 

 

In 1969, NTUC organised the “Trade Union Seminar on Modernization of the Labour Movement”, in the midst of an employment crisis when the British announced that they were pulling out of Singapore. This Modernisation Seminar generated Singapore’s unique brand of collaborative tripartism. As a result, the trust and mutual respect between the Government and NTUC enabled the setting up of various co-operatives, such as NTUC FairPrice, to help workers manage the cost of living and serve workers.

 

The Labour Movement has since then played a crucial role in Singapore’s success. As Mr Lee Kuan Yew said back in 1979, “The close co-operation between the political and the union leadership made modern Singapore. It is both history and today’s reality”. Mr Lee’s statement remains true in the way forward for us.

 

2019 is the 50th anniversary of the Modernisation Seminar. Singapore is at a transition point, where our economy is taking on a major transformation, where our society is an ageing one, and our political leadership is also undergoing renewal. NTUC has enjoyed the strong support of MOM in labour issues. Moving forward, from all the different speeches, we know that there is a need for NTUC to engage other agencies upstream, particularly MTI for transformation and MOE for lifelong learning for our workers.

 

In these and other aspects, the political and union leadership must continue the close collaboration that made modern Singapore. It must be today’s reality. It must be the future reality. At the heart of what our 4G leaders do, be it in the Government or in the Labour Movement, workers must be at the centre. With this close political and union cooperation, we can chart Singapore’s success together so that when Singapore succeeds, all Singaporeans can have a share in that success. 

 

Mr Deputy Speaker, I stand in support of the Budget.