28 Apr 2009
May Day Message 2009 by Mr Lim Swee Say, Secretary-General, National Trades Union Congress
1 We ended last year with an unemployment rate of 2.5%. Unfortunately, we will not see another year of full employment in 2009.
2 Worldwide, job losses are mounting. In USA, 5 million jobs were lost, pushing unemployment there to a 26-year high of 8.5%. The International Labour Organisation projected that as many as 51 million jobs could disappear in the course of the current global downturn.
3 As an open and export oriented economy, it is unavoidable that Singapore is more affected. Without a big domestic market, there is not much we can do to make up for the drastic drop in global demands. Our economy is projected to contract by 6% to 9% this year, compared to the global contraction of 1.7% forecast by the World Bank.
4 Excess manpower has led to higher retrenchment in 1Q09. Unemployment has gone up too. However, given the severity of the global downturn, the job situation could have been worse if not for the concerted efforts of the government, businesses and Labour Movement to prevent massive retrenchment and rapid rise in unemployment. There are two key reasons for this.
5 First, at a time when corporations worldwide are adopting retrenchment as the first resort, the tripartite partners in Singapore advocate retrenchment as the last resort. The guidelines on managing excess manpower issued by the tripartite partners, the launch of Skills Programme for Upgrading and Resilience (SPUR) and the offer of Jobs Credit and other major measures in the Resilience Package have made a real difference between cutting jobs to save costs as seen in other countries and cutting costs to save jobs in Singapore. Indeed, in the unionised sector, we saw retrenchment reaching as high as 900 workers per week during the Lunar New Year period. It dropped noticeably to an average of less than 300 per week since then, thus averting a potentially explosive situation of massive retrenchment seen elsewhere.
6 Second, at a time when being retrenched means becoming unemployed in many countries, we help retrenched workers not with unemployment benefits but with new skills and better confidence for them to be gainfully employed again. Our efforts are paying off. In the first quarter, NTUC’s e2i (Employment and Employability Institute) helped about 8,000 workers to up-skill and re-skill, and matched over 4,000 job seekers to new jobs, plus many more assisted by the CDCs and other agencies. With a job gallery of more than 19,000 job openings and still growing, e2i and its tripartite partners will continue to step up their efforts against rising unemployment.
7 Looking ahead, our battle against the downturn is far from over. The global economy has yet to hit the bottom. Also, the rebound, when it comes, is not expected to be strong. This means we will not only see negative economic growth during the downturn, but also slower growth when the recovery comes.
8 Thus, the retrenchment we saw in 1Q09 would not be the only wave, but just the first wave. Hence, it is not a question of whether we will see a second wave of retrenchment, but a question of when it will reach the peak, how high the peak will be, how long it will last, and how many more workers will lose their jobs in this next wave.
9 It is important to gear ourselves up for the tougher challenges ahead of us. We must be prepared but we need not be disheartened. No matter how rough the journey ahead of us may get, it can never stop the tripartite partners from staying united and pressing forward with our efforts to tackle the downturn.
10 We have solid reasons to be confident. We are able to tackle this global downturn in our uniquely pro-business and pro-worker way without having to choose between the interests of businesses and workers, because we have built up two critical assets that many other countries do not yet have: our strong national reserve and our strength in tripartism.
11 We therefore do not go on strikes in our factories and stage protests on our streets. Instead, we take peaceful and effective actions for the interests of the economy and our people.
12 We will keep cutting costs to save as many jobs as we can, and management has and will continue to lead by example.
13 We will keep re-skilling and up-skilling our workers and job seekers. Every worker must become more productive to keep his job, and every job seeker must become more employable to take on a new job.
14 Most important of all, we must keep creating growth and creating jobs. Looking back, because of our decisive move to attract major investments and increase job supply when the economy was doing well, there are still many jobs today for those who are willing to learn and adapt. Looking forward, to ensure that there will be more jobs tomorrow, we must keep building new capabilities, upgrading service quality and restructuring businesses, especially at a time of downturn.
15 On this May Day 2009, the Labour Movement salutes workers, union leaders, management and government agencies for working in unity to be cheaper yet better.
16 We wish all collars, all ages and all nationalities of working people in Singapore, a Happy May Day.
17 Together, we can upturn the downturn, the Singapore United Way.
