The year 2016 saw diverse performance across many sectors in our economy. Cyclical and structural forces will continue to impact different sectors unevenly.
Technological disruption will continue, enabling new business and employment models, creating new products and services, and requiring new skills while displacing old business models, products and services. To stay ahead, our working people must continually deep-skill, reskill and upskill. Similarly, the Labour Movement must continuously evolve to stay relevant to anticipate our new economy’s needs and working people’s aspirations.
Today, our U Network includes: 58 unions and two associations across 14 industrial clusters; 58 U Associates across 23 professions; partnerships with more than 13,000 small and medium-sized enterprises; and freelancers and self-employed groups; 10 social enterprises serving our working people’s lifecycle needs; a migrant worker network and multiple U Circle of Friends and practitioners. We must broaden and deepen these networks across our economy to be truly representative of today’s and tomorrow’s workforce. Through the Industry Transformation Maps and with our tripartite partners, we will mobilise our working people to adapt, stay relevant and grow with their companies and industries. This mirrors our push for a progressive and conducive work environment to facilitate productivity growth and innovation.
To equip our working people, we are expanding our partnerships with Institutes of Higher Learning on mentorship and career coaching programmes, through our Youth Career Network and NTUC’s e2i (Employment and Employability Institute). To-date, e2i’s suite of placement, professional development and productivity improvement services have benefitted over 80,000 working people.
We are also expanding our NTUC Education and Training Fund (NETF) so more working people can reskill and upskill through bite-sized, stackable modules via new learning pedagogies and technologies. Beyond equipping our working people for today’s jobs, we also want to prepare them for tomorrow’s opportunities. Thus, our Future Jobs, Skills and Training (FJST) capability has been working closely with e2i, NTUC LearningHub and government agencies to better identify future jobs, map relevant skillsets, develop and offer relevant training, to help tomorrow’s unemployed find tomorrow’s jobs.
Our social enterprises, too, must continuously evolve and provide integrated, quality products and services to help our working people across different life stages stretch their dollar. The digital economic transformation brings both challenges and opportunities. We must disrupt ourselves before others disrupt us and provide new services to meet the needs of tomorrow.
Our Labour Movement will journey with our working people to fulfil our potential and share the fruits of our economic transformation together.
Happy May Day!
