Dr Erfried Adam,
Mr Roland Feicht,
President of NTUC and Members of NTUC Central Committee,
Distinguished speakers,
This seminar is held at a very critical time for Singapore. Our economy is in a downturn. The dot-com bubble burst last year, bringing down with it demand for electronics and computer related products. The slowdown then spread to consumer goods. The Sep 11 terrorist attack in the US worsened an already difficult situation. Air travel and tourism dropped sharply. Our economy shrank by an estimated 2.2% for the whole of last year.
While some economists and analysts see a recovery coming, we are not out of the woods yet. Even as the global economy improves, we will face severe challenges. I am therefore very glad that the DGB and NTUC have worked together to hold this seminar on Enhancing Workers' Employability and Social Security. We need to understand the driving forces that will shape our workplace and our economy. We need to formulate responses to the challenges we meet. We need to help our workers face the future better prepared.
Change is all around us. It will hit every one of us sooner than we expect. I was discussing with some union leaders how technology change would make some jobs redundant. One union leader replied that to him it is very real. His job is to wind the copper coils that go into TV picture tubes. He had seen in the past 2 years how rapidly the price of plasma and LCD screen TV sets has dropped. He thinks that in 3 to 5 years, nobody will buy a TV set with a fat picture tube. So he will be out of a job, because the job of winding copper coils for TV tubes will disappear.
Polaroid has disappeared. Instant photography using chemicals is no match for digital technology. So recently, Polaroid filed for bankruptcy. We used to have factories here in Singapore that made typewriters. They were closed down many years ago. As technology advances, many jobs – and skills – will become valueless. And the cycle of change will get shorter and shorter.
The way to survive is to be like Corning. Corning used to make glassware for cooking. It applied its knowledge of making high quality glass to producing fibre optics cables. Corning is now no longer a company that makes dishes for the kitchen. It has become a leading maker of cables for high-speed data transmission.
If we stay still like Polaroid, we will be wiped out. If we use our knowledge and break loose like Corning, we will survive and succeed. This is true of companies as well as of individual workers. Employment in the modern economy has become a bit like trying to ski on water. To stay afloat, we have to keep moving. The moment we stop, we sink. To remain employed, we have to remain employable. And to be employable means always having the skills that the employers need to produce the goods and services that the market wants.
Change will be brought upon us not just by technology alone. Our jobs can move away because other countries have become more attractive to investors. We enjoyed a headstart in the past 30 years because we focused single-mindedly on educating our population and providing an efficient infrastructure for investors. That effort made our workforce and our economy highly competitive. It attracted high value added investments to Singapore. But what we can do, others can do too. Countries around the world are spending more to educate their populations, improving their infrastructure, and removing obstacles to capital flow. And they have more people and more land than we do. If we become complacent, we will be overtaken soon.
We have to find the way to give ourselves a new headstart. We have to get into the new growth areas ahead of our competitors. To achieve that, we need to learn the new skills and capabilities that are needed for the new industries.
But acquiring relevant skills is still not enough. Elsewhere, work arrangements have become more flexible through the use of part-time workers, flexible hours multi-tasking. We have to examine how we should structure our work patterns in Singapore to allow the companies and workers to respond nimbly to the market.
Ultimately, our aim is not just to help the companies make more money. It is to give better assurance to our workers that there will be enough jobs available - jobs that they can qualify to do and jobs that will pay well.
At the same time, we should also be concerned about what happens to those who are out of a job and those who have retired. The social security system we have today evolved from a period of strong, continuous growth. With full employment and a tight labour market, most families could be well taken care of. In the long term, our economy will probably not grow at the same strong pace as before. With new work arrangements, there will be many more workers engaged on part-time or temporary basis. Their welfare benefits provided by their companies may be insufficient. As our economy matures, there will be severe implications on the adequacy of our social safety nets.
We have much to learn from Germany and Japan on how to approach these issues. Both economies are technologically advanced, and rank with the US as the world’s most influential. They have large and maturing populations.
I am sure the lessons we can draw from Germany's and Japan's experiences will be most instructive. Let me thank the expert speakers coming here to share their research findings and work with our union leaders. I would also like to thank Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) for the arrangements and kind sponsorship to make this seminar possible.
I wish you fruitful deliberations over these two days. Thank you.
