He’s been at the helm of the Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF) for 26 years, has worked with three NTUC Secretary-Generals, several Labour and Manpower Ministers at the government level and sat through close to 40 National Wages Council meetings.
Stephen Lee has also fronted Singapore’s leading corporations like the Port of Singapore Authority and Singapore Airlines, where he remains as Chairman today.
NTUC This Week: You have helmed SNEF for 26 years. What kept you going in your tasks as the employers’ chief spokesman all these years?
Stephen Lee: I think it was really the role of the employer in the tripartite cooperation. I’ve witnessed how the competitiveness of a company or a country has gone through with adversarial industrial relations. A company needs a pro-business environment and also industrial peace to be successful and I think employers have an important role to play in that tripartite relationship.
How has SNEF benefitted from a close working relationship with the government and union leaders?
I find it to be quite rewarding and actually through successive recessions and witnessing how tripartism can really work and work in a way to help both workers and companies, that is quite meaningful. I actually find that our working relationship and the building of trust and mutual respect actually deepen when there is a crisis.
What role did tripartism play during the difficult economic downturn period?
Unions in Singapore are different – they are committed to working with employers to resolve issues. As far as we need the unions to go down to the ground to explain to workers why you need to take some pain, at the same time we also need companies’ cooperation to retain jobs. I think the approach to reduce costs, and at the same time to save jobs, that has been a successful formula for us coming out of different recessions.
How did NTUC’s union leaders stand out during each crisis?
Their willingness to go down to the ground to explain painful measures rather than resisting them. During the 2008 and 2009 crises for example, Singapore was able to rally together a plan with the help of the government with incentives. Singapore was able to register double digits GDP growth whereas some of our Asian neighbors who were facing some of the same economic crisis were not able to act as fast.
Source: NTUC This Week
