By Ramesh Subbaraman
The New Year is a time to reflect on what’s been achieved in the past year, where things have fallen short and what lies ahead.
Various union clusters under the Labour Movement have been doing exactly that – identifying work areas which need further strengthening and new areas to work on.
One common target the clusters have set for themselves is to enhance productivity and competitiveness of their respective industries and workplaces.
Productivity has been a perennial concern for the tripartite partners. In his recent New Year’s message, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong flagged Singapore’s poor productivity performance for 2014.
He pointed out that productivity had been disappointing for the third year in a row and for the first three quarters of the year, negative growth of -0.5% was recorded. He stressed the need to do better otherwise incomes cannot continue to rise and will soon stagnate.
Electronics & Precision & Machinery Cluster
The Electronics & Precision & Machinery Engineering cluster plans to work closely with partners and companies to raise the productivity and competitiveness of the business through technology and transformation.
The cluster’s spokesperson said: “With efforts focussed on the productivity and skills aspects, the call for real wage improvements is also made easier when our workers can better deliver the required value to merit the improved pay.
“One avenue is to encourage more companies to move into more pervasive use of robotics, both to increase manufacturing efficiency as well as to complement workers to make work Easier, Smarter and Safer.”
Today, more than 13,000 technicians and engineers are being upgraded in their skills-set through the existing Workforce Skills Qualifications on Assembly & Test and Wafer Fab, with some progressing through the ranks.
Building And Facility Management Cluster
The Building and Facility Management Cluster shared that it achieved some breakthroughs in 2014 to push for mandatory adoption of Progressive Wage Model (PWM) for the cleaning and security industries.
According to the cluster’s spokesperson, in addition to pushing for PWM in the landscape sector in 2015, the cluster will focus on efforts to achieve breakthroughs in productivity for the cleaning, landscaping and building and construction sectors.
The cluster will work with industry stakeholders and its unionised companies to find practical and scalable solutions to improve productivity specific to each sector concerned.
Public Service Cluster
The Progressive Wage Model (PWM) is also very much in the mind of the Public Service Cluster.
It plans to pursue better wage and career progression opportunities for the Operational Support Officers (OSO) in the Civil Service.
The cluster plans to undertake at least five projects to implement PWM, paying special attention to progression for non-graduate officers.
Another area of focus is representing Professionals, Managers and Executives (PMEs). The cluster will open up the scope of recognition to more PMEs and offer more workplace assistance to this group of workers
Transport and Logistics Cluster
The transport and logistics cluster plans to equip more locals with driving skills and safe driving abilities, and enable them to embark on jobs such as Bus Captains in the Public Transport industry. This will help meet the growing demand for Bus Captains in the next two to three years.
Enhancing the productivity of port workers is another area of work for the cluster.
The cluster recently worked with PSA Marine to skill locals to become Marine Assistants and Launch Masters to handle more sophisticated equipment and boats. The move will enable workers to take advantage of the Progressive Wage Model.
Source: NTUC This Week
