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Brother Guy Ryder, Director-General of ILO
Minister Josephine Teo, sister and fellow cabinet minister,
President Robert Yap, SNEF
President Mary Liew, NTUC Central Committee
Fellow CC members
Dialogue partners
Fellow ministers from ASEAN, including our 6 ASEAN dialogue partners, Mongolia and Timor Leste
Brothers, Sisters, friends.
As the last speaker of the day, it is my great “pressure” to deliver the closing remarks. And closing remarks, especially after all the wisdom you have heard from government and from businesses, it is left to the union representative to string it all together. As usual, they have all the concepts, we have to do the hard work.
Well obviously, you know I’m joking. But seriously though, Dr Robert Yap actually made sense just now. It has been a long day, and I stand between you and orchard road, and I stand between you and the Singapore economy. So I want to demonstrate how friendly the unions are in Singapore. I give you two choices, do you want the long version of my speech, or do you want the short version of my speech? Who wants the long version? I thought so, only Guy Ryder, the workaholic.
So I will just give you one simple story. And maybe just give you one point in my speech. How many of you have not heard of the story of Goldilocks and the three bears. I’m sure all of you have heard of it, and are now cranking in your head – what the heck does Goldilocks have to do with the future of work? Well in the story, you know that Goldilocks went for a walk and enjoyed herself so much in the forest and she happened to chance upon a house. and being out the whole day, hungry and tired, and without good manners, went into the house. Tasted the porridge that was too hot, too cold, and found the right temperature porridge. And after she had eaten, decided to sleep in the first bed that was too hard, the second bed that was too soft. And the third bed was just right. And when she woke up, sat on the chairs that were too big, and when she eventually sat on the chair that was just right, she broke the chair. And when the bears came home, they were mightily upset. And Goldilocks ran away frightened, never to go into the forest again. Well, this story is one of the very few children stories that does not have a “happily ever after” ending. And it is not written by a Singapore unionist. Because if it was written by a Singapore unionist, especially from NTUC, Goldilocks and the three bears would sit down and have a conversation.
Why would the Singapore unionist and the Singapore Government, and our Singapore employers come together? It’s like what Lay Lim said just now. Because in the midst of agreements or disagreements, we have conversations. And in the midst of agreements and disagreements, regardless, we build the important element of trust. And because of our history, we have done so for the last 50 years. We have a credit reservoir of trust where all of us can come together with agreement or without agreement and sit down as brothers and sisters, with shared ownership of our country, shared ownership of our vision that sister Josephine mentioned, so that we can create an agile, productive and future-ready workforce.
So, the key thing that I want to impress upon you, is that we will continue to build that trust, but not just building the trust, but bringing a practical proposal on the table for the Government and business employers to agree upon. What do I mean? Well, in spite of all the things we spoke about today. There are many workers in the world who are fearful of technology. why? Simply because technology is seen and in some instances, real, in taking away their bread and butter. Even in Singapore, for all the accolades our friends from around the region and world have given us, some of my workers, in fact some of my union leaders, are just as fearful of technology. So Brother Patrick Tay, what he said about changing mindsets is critical. All of us know that we must shift mindsets. The question is, how? How can we practically link the Government’s macro policies, the business requirements or the bottom line, together with workers’ interest. So it is tough. But in Singapore, I’m always thankful that our Government provides the macro framework so that businesses can move, and our workers can move.
What do I mean by this? Well in Singapore, if you go to the diff websites of our Government, you will see all kinds of grants. Enterprise Development Grant, Inclusive Growth Programme, Adapt and Grow, Professional Conversion, you have SkillsFuture, you have our NTUC UTAP for training, we have all kinds of things that the Government has put together in the macro space to encourage transformation, to encourage innovation. And, the Government has also come up with a clear direction of industry transformation through the 23 ITMS (Industry Transformation Maps) that you’re quite familiar with in Singapore. Workers are helped by Workforce Singapore, by SSG, to match our training under the broad SkillsFuture framework in this industry transformation. But nevertheless, I think that the unions have a role to play. And this is genuine, that I picked up in my one year on the ground with my brothers and sisters – that while we have these macro programmes, they are fearful, still, perhaps, but in many ways also they don’t quite understand what they quite need to do.
So what is the role of unions, in the future of work, if we want a future-ready workforce, an agile workforce? Well, we have a simple proposal. To collate all the different ideas I heard this morning into an experimental plan to be in place on the ground. And this is the agenda built upon by the Government, by SNEF (Singapore National Employers Federation), to come together to set up what we call the Company Training Committees. It is to operationalise the ideas of worker 4.0 that Brother Patrick Tay introduced to you just now, at the lowest of the levels of the individual, and back up to the business level.
So what would the Company Training Committees (CTCs) do? I’ll just summarise for you into three “A”s. The first thing that the CTCs would do is to accelerate the Acceptance of technology. In other words, have a formalised structure in the companies to talk to workers, and even management, about technology and what good it can bring to the business and the workers. How productivity would enhance business, how productivity in time, will bring about better wages, better welfare and better work prospects.
The second thing that the CTCs can do is to accelerate the Adoption of tech. And how would unions in Singapore help? Because we have a close relationship with the PAP Government, we can access many of the Singapore grants. because we have e2i, we know what grants are relevant to what industries, in what ways we want to transform. CTC is not just to benefit the workers. It is to help the employers with Government grants and importantly, to help also the SMEs that one of our panelists mentioned about just now, I think it was Alan Dehaze. How do we help the small and medium enterprises? Through the CTCs, we want to bring in our A-star expertise of transformation. Of thinking through ops technology solutioning. Not just talking about technology as a general solution, but applying technology to solve your business problem. Do not go for the answer without knowing what the problem your business would like to solve is. Our Government, partnering e2i, can provide a platform in the CTC to help our companies.
And of course as the Secretary-General of the union, I have my vested interest for my workers as well. Through the CTC, we can know better the companies’ transformation plans. We can start the adoption of technology and for workers’ outcome earlier in the process, so that we can partner management to go into training programmes to absorb the technology. What will this create then? This will create a situation where the businesses and the workers Actualise all the thinking here as fast as possible. Because your technology absorption curve, your technology utilisation curve will be that much shorter. So that when we do it right with CTCs at least in part playing that role, you can capture business value and I can capture value for our workers as soon as possible.
In Chinese we have a saying 一寸光阴一寸金. And it is becoming so real today. A measure of time is equal to a weight of gold. And today in the business world, you know that if you are a first-mover, you have that strategic advantage. A two-year advantage can mean life and death. So, if we can do this together as tripartite partners, and in Singapore’s case, I know we can do it. Because many of the companies are coming on board. Dr Robert Yap also agreed that this is a win-win thing for the two players in the tripartite relationship. He knows that businesses will win, I know that workers will win. And if we can do the first CTC, we can convince more and more to come into the same space. In fact, we launched this idea only in March. Today we already have about 20 already signing an MOU, and many more to come. In fact, NTUC is working with our partners to put CTCs into companies at a rate of 1,000 in three years’ time. To see if we can move the needle and when we aggregate all the companies coming together in this Smart Nation push, smart factory push, then we have a third win – not just for companies, not for workers, but for our country as well.
When this happens, what will we get? We will get sustainable growth from the macro level, all the way down to our workers. CTCs are not meant for one port innovation. If we operationalise that structure, together with our business bosses, together with the Government’s support, we can actually churn this into another strategic advantage for a small country like ours.
So that’s my simple point to you. Goldilocks is just to help you to wake up. But the real point is about getting all these ideas into an action plan. The CTCs may not be applicable to all of you and may need to be evolved even in Singapore’s context. But it is the first step to bring the future of work into reality today. And when we can have this clarity, I am more assured that my brothers and sisters on the ground can understand what we are talking about. And when they can understand what we’re talking about, then we would have met the objective of this forum. Making the future of work real, and ensuring that national GDP growth is meaningful.
Because in Singapore, we don’t believe in just economic growth. Economic growth is meaningless if it is not shared with our citizens, our workers. So that is the common mantra that drives my Brother Lim Swee Say, Sister Josephine Teo, Sister Mary and my “partner in crime” Dr Robert Yap. We want to cement this tripartite relationship for the common good of our workers, for our society, for our country.
