Mdm Speaker, in my chit chats with union leaders, grassroots leaders and residents, feedback has been most positive. It is a good Budget with bold moves. A few of them asked me, when they turn 65, would they be able to join the Pioneer Generation. I explained to them why not. I told them, in my case, I am now 60 years old. In 1965, I was 11 years old. Since I was only a Primary 5 student, I do not qualify as one in the Pioneer Generation. I asked them, by the time I turn 65, how old would I have been in 1965? They thought for awhile -- still 11 years old. So I told them, “It does not matter how old I get – whether 65, 75, 85 – I cannot change the fact that I was only 11 years old in 1965. This is the reason why I will never be able to join the Pioneer Generation.” One union leader heard this, and was really disappointed. He said, “Oh no! No hope, then.”
I said, “Yes, of course, there is hope.” Today, we honour the generation before us. Years from now, if we continue to do well, if the Government is still clean, responsible and caring, if the Budget is still healthy, the generation after us may decide to honour our generation as well. So therefore, yes, there is always hope.
To ensure that our Budget will always be good, year after year, of course, we must honour the past, take care of the present. But what is even more important is that we must prepare our economy, our businesses and our workforce for the future, so that we can sustain what we have today. Good growth, good employment, good wage increases, and more importantly, the resources to do more good for our people.
We are seeing encouraging signs on the ground. Yesterday, Member Mr Liang Eng Hwa said that PIC has become a verb. I agree with him. Indeed, there are healthy signs that the economy is shifting to a new track. However, we are not full steam ahead yet.
Productivity gain has been low. The good news is we have stopped the decline in 2013 from minus 2% to 0%. But the bad news is there was no increase in 2013. There are many reports of productivity and innovation in the media. My union leaders asked me, “What happened? Are those innovation and productivity gains for real? If so, how could productivity gain be zero for last year?”
I have to find simple ways to explain to my union leaders. Let us say labour productivity across the sectors, across companies, across workers, range from 0% to 200%. And let us say the overall average of labour productivity is 100%. Basically, there are two forces at work. One force is pushing up the labour productivity towards 102%, 103%. Another force is pressing down labour productivity towards 99%, 98% and so on. If these two forces are equal – up cancels out down -- we will end up having zero. And that is what happened in 2013.
What is this negative force that is pushing down our labour productivity? Back to the earlier example. If overall average labour productivity is 100%, imagine, if those sectors with labour productivity of less than 100% -- that is, 30%, 50%, 70% -- if they continue to grow and hire more workers, at that level of productivity, which is lower than the national average, they will bring down the overall average national labour productivity. This is the averaging down effect.
There are many sectors in Singapore today that are growing and they are below our national average in terms of labour productivity. These sectors range from cleaning, construction, security, retail, landscaping, cashier, ticket sales, waiters, material handling, pest control, light goods vehicle drivers, low-end production and so on. I am very sure our interpreters will have problems catching up with me, but I am rushing through just to show that indeed, we do have many sectors in Singapore today that are still below national average and worst is, they are still growing very fast in terms of manpower requirements.
These sectors, using outdated tools, equipment and methods, continue to be manpower and labour intensive. If nothing is done to improve these sectors, they will keep averaging down the overall national labour productivity.
What about the positive force – the one that is pushing up our labour productivity in Singapore? When we transform existing sectors, whether they are above or below national average, as long as we transform them and we improve skills and productivity sector by sector, they will add to improvement to our labour productivity. Or when we grow new sectors that have higher labour productivity than national average, again, as they employ more people, they will average up our national level productivity.
Therefore, as long as we are able to create new jobs – good and better jobs with good productivity and good pay – we will be able to progressively upgrade the labour productivity in Singapore. For our national labour productivity gain to go up, we need to up the positive and down the negative. Only when the positive force is stronger than the negative force, we will then see net gain in our national labour productivity.
To up the positive, all existing jobs, good or bad, we must make them better. We must turn old manufacturing into new manufacturing. We must turn old services into new services. We must try to professionalise every job – it does not matter whether they are high or low end jobs. Every job can be professionalised. Ask the gardener in Japan; ask the cleaner in Germany; ask the waiter in USA. They will tell you that it is possible to professionalise every job.
At the same time, we must create more new jobs especially jobs of the future to meet the aspirations of our people, especially the younger generation. From future manufacturing to future services, those driven by technology, innovation and knowledge, so that we can be more future ready than the competition.
At the same time, we need to down the negative. Many jobs in Singapore today are still not good enough. They are done in the way many years behind other developed countries. Cheap labour was an easy solution of the past, but not anymore. Instead of being a laggard, we must strive to be an early adopter of best practices, technology solutions, especially labour-saving devices in the Asia Pacific, and better still, in the world.
Putting them together, up the positive, down the negative, means we have to upgrade and professionalised existing jobs. We have to attract good jobs of the future, and at the same time we must be prepared to transform low-wage, low-skilled sectors to become less labour intensive. If we can do all that, I believe 2% to 3% gain in labour productivity can be within our reach.
Several Members, yesterday and today, said that it is only natural to ask for more during the Budget debate. I agree with them because I am asking for more too. I am not asking for more to be in Budget 2014, but I am asking and calling for more action outside of this Parliament on the ground.
More action by all agencies, businesses, industry bodies, unions, workers, and consumers too. The labour movement walks our talk. We are doing more on the ground. The Labour MPs who spoke before me have shared with this House how we are strengthening our 4Ps support for all collars, ages, and nationalities of workers.
At the same time, we are updating the wage structure too. In the past, when we tried to move away from seniority-based system, the labour movement spearheaded the reduction of the minimum and maximum ratio in companies and job sectors. When we tried to minimise job losses during the downturn, the labour movement spearheaded flexible wage system.
Today, as we strive for quality growth, the labour movement is championing the Progressive Wage Model to support this transition towards quality growth. We are happy that the labour movement is not alone. Together with many businesses and workers supported by agencies, we are doing more and lead the way in this process of change. For example, in conservancy cleaning, with ride-on sweeper, cleaners can now clean pavements, drains and grass patches easier, smarter and safer. Much faster and at the same time, save labour and earn higher wages. In landscaping, workers can now cut grass using a remote control grass-cutting robot. Again, faster with less labour and higher salary.
In hotel, hydraulic pumps under the bed helps the mature worker to clean the hotel room easier, smarter, safer, and faster too. Being able to clean more rooms means more pay for the workers and at the same time, it means less need for manpower for the hotels.
In the marine sector, welders have now become operators of welding machines. Instead of doing welding by hand, they now operate the welding machines. Again, they can do their job now faster, with more consistent standards, and at the same time, higher salary and they are able to work to an older age.
In food factories, installation of packaging machines has improved productivity by many times. Again, higher wages with fewer workers. In F&B, the use of mobile ordering, installation of up-to-date kitchen equipment, nurturing of management trainees are helping some F&Bs to grow faster and more profitable too. Workers are, at the same time, paid better.
Some Members may not be aware that the perfect soft-boiled egg is cooked to 64 degrees Celsius. Anything lower than that will make the egg too raw; anything higher than that will make the egg too cooked. How do they ensure that every egg is soft-boiled at 64 degrees Celsius? An F&B outlet, Eighteen Chefs, has recently installed a machine. That machine will produce eggs after eggs at 64 degrees Celsius, and it will always turn up eggs that are perfect every time. It makes the jobs of the workers easier, faster, safer, and yet at the same time, because of higher productivity, they are paid more too.
In security, a central monitoring system enables security guard to monitor multiple sites at the same time. As a result, less manpower is needed and more pay for the workers. In electronic manufacturing, PMETs are being trained to become T-shaped – horizontal skills and deep vertical skills. As a result, they are more productive, more competitive, and more importantly, more employable too.
In shopping malls, landlords are now helping tenants with recruitment and conducting trainings onsite, so that these SMEs in the shopping malls can send their workers for training to improve their skills, productivity and wages.
In a growing number of sectors, we are also seeing the upgrading of ITE and poly graduates into professionals and specialists through professional accreditations. By breaking the glass ceiling for the ITE and poly graduates, more are now able to move up the skill, productivity, job and wage ladder.
The list goes on. If Members feel that these illustrations are just common sense, I agree with you. Unfortunately, after years of high growth in manpower and unskilled labour, common sense is not so common on the ground anymore.
I am very glad that some are changing, but at the same time, we are sad that some still resist change. They would rather go out of business, or get out Singapore, than to change and upgrade their operations here. It is their choice, but workers are the ones who will suffer the pain most.
The world is changing fast and waits for no one. We need a greater and broader sense of urgency. Every change we make today may not always turn out right tomorrow. But if you do not take risk and responsibility, as advocated by Member Dr Janil Puthucheary yesterday, I am very sure many things will turn out wrong in the future.
When a dog bites a man, it is no news. But when a man bites a dog, it is big news.
My speech today is very much a “dog bites man” kind of speech, but I believe in what I say, what I see and how I feel. Manpower has been, and will always be our most critical resources.
There are three types of bricks layer. The first type, the good type, will look at their jobs as laying bricks one by one. The better type will look at their jobs as building walls – wall by wall. But the best type will look at their jobs as building houses, schools and hospitals.
We all want our workers to be of the best kind. We want them to be engaged, motivated and to always give their very best. But then, management, organisations, leaders, are we at the same time prepared to engage them and embrace them wholeheartedly?
We must help them to strive for better skills, better productivity, better jobs and better pay. We must strive to make every job a better job, every worker a better worker. If we do that, then we will have good business, good economy and good Budget year after year for many years to come. With that, Mdm Speaker, I support the Motion.
财政预算案辩论2014
林瑞生先生(Mr Lim Swee Say): 年长者有三怕： 一怕看医生、二怕进医院、三怕见账单。
有了建国一代配套，居民们告诉我他们不需要再担心了，可以放心。
建国一代从65岁开始，若享年百岁，可受益35年。有了这80亿的基金，我们确保这个配套不会中途终止，从而让他们更安心。
建国一代获得终身照顾，二代也松了一口气。一位居民，他的母亲70多岁了，他问我，将来他母亲健保双全的保险费会不会继续上升。我说，不会，不但不会上升，还会下降，可能会下降一半。他听了，松了一口气。另外一位居民，他的母亲80多岁了，他问我，那么我呢？我的母亲80多岁了，情况是一样吗？我说，你的情况会更好，因为你的母亲会得到足够的保健储蓄帮她购买健保双全，所以他也松了一口气，而且是一口大气。当然，二代也期望未来的财政预算案会一直好下去。
要有好的财政预算案，就必须要有好的经济表现。要社会更凝聚、更进步、更温馨，我们就必须能够持续发展：因此经济要不断转型、企业要不断适应、劳动生产力也要不断提升。
只有这样，今天的二代才有能力照顾建国一代。未来，也希望三代有能力照顾今天的二代。让我们一起努力，一代照顾一代，大家都能安居乐业、安享晚年。
让我们继续做一个独特的新加坡。
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