He is a battle-hardened union leader, having seen the Singapore Bank Employees’ Union (SBEU) through two major recessions in Singapore.
Today, with the financial services sector poised to grow over the next few years, 62-year-old General Secretary Bobby Tay is getting ready to battle something new – transformation. He is confident that transformation will create just as many job opportunities for support staff in the banking industry giving them more opportunities to move up the skills ladder through upskilling.
He shares with NTUC This Week his union journey and what SBEU has been doing for its mainly 6,900 rank-and-file members.
NTUC This Week: What would you say is your biggest achievement in union work?
Bobby Tay: A personal achievement was being elected as the secretary of the ASEAN Banking Union Council (ABUC) at its first meeting held in Jakarta, Indonesia in 1999. I served in the position for three years till 2002 and took up the position again from 2006 till 2015. ABUC is a group of 12 national banking unions from the ASEAN region. This achievement was itself a milestone for SBEU and for a Singaporean union official to hold an international position. It was the first time SBEU had an official elected to an regional union movement and had a direct role to influence decisions concerning workers in the banking industry in the ASEAN region.
Q: You’ve been through two big financial crises, what were the lessons learnt?
A : During the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997, SBEU lost almost 2,000 members through retrenchment when the banks collapsed and local banks embarked on mergers and acquisitions. History repeated itself in 2008 with the global financial crisis. A few hundred members were lost through retrenchment.
In 1997 during the first downturn, SBEU negotiated and secured a training grant of between $1,000 to $1,200 for union members affected by the merger of Keppel Bank of Singapore with Tat Lee Bank. The training grant became a permanent feature in all later retrenchments in the unionised banks in Singapore. When the next downturn came, SBEU was already battle hardened and ready to face numerous rounds of negotiation concerning the retrenchment of its members.
Q: What are your thoughts on the transformation ahead for the financial services sector?
A: As the Industry Transformation Map aims to create 3,000 net jobs in the financial services sector, and an additional 1,000 net jobs in the fintech sector annually, SBEU is heartened and optimistic. There will be just as many jobs created for support staff which form the majority of SBEU members. SBEU will work closely with the Singapore Bank Officers’ Association (SBOA), the union representing executives in the banking industry to ride on the employment growth.
Q: What are some of the things that worry you now?
A: It is about getting union members to step forward to take up leadership roles. Union work is perceived as holding back career advancement. I am always on the lookout for branch leaders to invite them into the Executive Council to take on a greater role, and for ordinary members to be inducted into leadership roles in the respective branches that they are working with. I am constantly on the look out for a younger person to hand over my duties in SBEU. That would be my proudest moment and achievement.
