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Mr Speaker Sir, I rise to speak in support of the Fortitude Budget as Deputy Sec-Gen of NTUC. COVID-19 has transformed our world drastically and the past few months had been challenging for everybody. Since MTI’s last review in March, the disruptions to economic activity in major economies around the world have been more severe than expected due to the stringent containment measures taken by various governments to slow the spread of COVID-19. Most of the major advanced economies, as well as the emerging economies are now projected to see full-year recessions in 2020. Against this backdrop, the outlook for the Singapore economy has weakened further.
As a small and open economy, Singapore’s GDP growth is expected to come in at -7% to -4%. Sectors such as manufacturing, wholesale trade and transportation and storage will be adversely affected by the sharper-than-expected slowdown in many of Singapore’s key markets and there will be prolonged uncertainties as well as disruptions in the global supply chains. The implementation of Circuit Breaker measures to contain the COVID-19 virus in Singapore was necessary but it has also created an impact on our economy – business operations were disrupted, non-essential business services were forced to close during the Circuit Breaker period; workers have to make alternative arrangements to work from home. While we have managed to flatten the epidemic curve, we must now shift our focus to tackle the “unemployment” curve as retrenchment and job losses will inevitably rise. As the Executive Secretary of the Metal Industries Workers’ Union (MIWU), I had the chance to speak to many of our employer partners as well as our workers on ground. And we are seeing reduced work hours, shorter work weeks and even no pay leave becoming more frequent now in many of our branches and our partner companies. So I naturally understand that our union leaders and workers are concerned about their job security in the immediate and longer term.
Labour Movement Supports the Fortitude Budget
Therefore, the Labour Movement welcomes the Fortitude Budget that supports the gradual reopening of our economy. The enhancement to the Jobs Support Scheme will help to sustain companies in the early phase of re-opening and reduce the pressure to retrench workers. PMETs and workers aged 40s and 50s are expected to be more impacted by any retrenchments. They are more likely to face difficulties in finding jobs in this distressed job market. To help workers stay employed and employable, the new SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package will create close to 100,000 placement opportunities in the three areas of jobs, traineeships and training. This is very much welcomed by union leaders and workers that I spoke to.
The National Jobs Council chaired by Senior Minister Tharman will oversee this effort. NTUC hopes that the National Jobs Council will leverage the NTUC Job Security Council set up earlier in February this year, to pre-emptively match at-risk and soon-to-be displaced workers into available jobs. NTUC Job Security Council, as Sec-Gen Ng Chee Meng has shared earlier, has more than 7,000 companies in our network and emplaced more than 10,000 workers into job opportunities. These jobs were mainly in essential services or to support COVID-19 efforts, especially in sectors such as healthcare, retail and logistics. Through this, and with the help of our unions and the various Company Training Committees or CTCs, NTUC stands ready to support the Government in the National Jobs Council, leveraging our existing capabilities and network to help match workers to new jobs and equip them with deeper skills at the national level. I hope policy incentives being considered by the National Jobs Council can further support the early success of NTUC Job Security Council and encourage more companies to join us in this network to create more traineeship placements and more job opportunities.
Leverage Downtime to Send Workers for Training
One of the key enablers to allow better job matching is skills training to ensure our workers acquire future-ready, industry relevant skills. During this economic slowdown, NTUC has been working closely with our unions to encourage companies to send their workers for training and to take advantage of the various schemes, like absentee payroll for example, to help defray wage costs when the workers are away on training. Companies should leverage the CTC, the Company Training Committee, to identify skills and training needs to better upskill their workers.
One example is Diethelm Keller Aviation (DKA). This is a unionised company under the Metal Industries Workers’ Union. Together with the union, the company set up a CTC in 2019, with the aim of furthering workers’ career prospects through relevant skills training. The company engaged NTUC’s e2i or the Employment and Employability Institute, to redesign jobs and raised productivity of their workers. While DKA’s business in the aviation sector has been affected by COVID-19, they will be using this downtime to cross-skill workers through structured on-the-job training so they have flexibility to re-deploy their workers to areas of need and emerge stronger from this crisis.
Many companies like DKA in the manufacturing sector has been impacted by disruptions – the Malaysian workers commuting across from the causeway due to the lockdown situation in Malaysia, and by cross-skilling their workers, they are able to respond to this transient manpower shortages and cope with the skill gaps they may have.
Operationalising New Virtual OTR
Some companies have pivoted to other business segments with growth opportunities and accelerated their business transformation during this period. One example is Certact Engineering, a unionised company under the Metal Industries Workers’ Union as well. The company has recently transformed their business from a plastic and aluminum manufacturing company, to manufacture higher value medical equipment components like the COVID-19 test kits and ventilator parts. To support the new business requirements, Certact had to remodel their business process, redesign existing jobs and send their workers for training to operate the new manufacturing lines. So even as I speak today, Certact is partnering NTUC to leverage the CTC and the Ops-Tech Roadmapping process to implement their new business model and strengthen their workforce capabilities. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, physical Ops-Tech Roadmapping or OTR sessions cannot be conducted. Hence NTUC worked with A*STAR to develop a virtual-OTR methodology and we embarked on this Virtual OTR process with Certact Engineering recently. They have given good feedback that it’s a useful process and it allows us to conduct such processes even with Circuit Breaker measures. So we will be conducting more virtual-OTRs with the various CTCs, using online platforms to ensure that companies’ transformation needs and workers’ training needs continue to be served by the Virtual-OTR during this pandemic.
Workers have also shared with me that training-related costs may deter their employers facing cashflow challenges during COVID-19 pandemic from undertaking skills upgrading for their workers. NTUC introduced the NETF (NTUC-Education and Training Fund) Collaborative Fund or NCF in March 2019 to provide training-related funding support to unionised companies who send their unionised employees for training opportunities. To help the increasing number of affected workers and to ensure that training costs to companies are further reduced during this COVID-19 period, I am glad to share that NTUC has increased the training support funding cap of NCF from $30,000 to $50,000 per unionised company. To speed up business recovery, we will also introduce a new NETF Collaborative Fund Lite (NCF-Lite) for non-unionised companies with 50 or more NTUC union members in their workforce, with training support of up to $8,000 per company.
So I want to encourage more companies, both unionised and non-unionised, to approach NTUC, set up CTCs and tap into this additional funding support to send your workers for training.
Conclusion
So Singapore is not immune to the disruptions brought about by COVID-19. We have in place structures and initiatives to help the Singapore economy recover. The Government has set aside nearly $100 billion through the four Budgets to support both businesses and workers; the Labour Movement also stands ready to journey with our tripartite partners through this challenging period.
We will continue to work closely with our tripartite partners to keep our workers in jobs, to enhance job matching and job creation for our workers, to encourage skills training so that we can collectively navigate through the new post-COVID era. Tough times don’t last but tough people do and I believe that if we continue to stay united and band together, face the challenges head on as one united Singapore, we will be able to go through this global pandemic together and be ready when the upturn comes.
With that Sir, I stand in support of the Budget. Thank you.
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