Welcome
Our Guest-of-Honour Brother Ong Ye Kung, NTUC Deputy Secretary-General
Our Special Guests; Brother Lim Swee Say, NTUC Secretary-General and Bro Heng Chee How
Sister Kay Kuok, President SHA
Brothers and Sisters from the Cluster Unions
Representatives from WDA, SHA, E2i, and Employers,
A very Good Afternoon to all of you. Thank you for taking the time off to grace today’s event.
Under the Labour Movement family, we have gathered the strengths of three unions to form the Hospitality and Consumer Business Cluster. They are:
Together, we hope to bring about a bigger impact to our workers in the hospitality and consumer business industry, which employs about 435,800 workers.
Some of the difficulties and issues faced by our low-wage workers today are: working in menial jobs and having low or minimal skills with no prospects for career advancement. Lacking skills and education, they are not able to secure better jobs with better wages. Many of these workers have to work extra hours or take on multiple jobs to provide for their family.
As much as we can resolve some of these issues within the union, there are bigger challenges that could be more complicated and impact not just us, but other related sectors in the industry.
I am glad that with the formation of the Hospitality and Consumer Business Cluster, we can gather our efforts and resources together to find better solutions to tackle cluster-wide issues such as manpower crunch and productivity, in turn improving the sector with better jobs and wages. For Phase 1 – Progressive Wages for Hotel Sector, the cluster will employ a two-pronged strategy.
Strategy 1 will aim to increase wages for the low-paying jobs through productivity schemes like the HOST programme. The HOST programme provides an opportunity for Singaporeans to enhance their earning capabilities through better jobs in the industry. The new positions that are created through HOST ensure that for the same number of working hours that a worker puts in, his income is further augmented.
In a way, the HOST programme enables a worker to be more productive at the workplace by optimising his skills and time and at the same time by rewarding him for his efforts and efficiency.
Strategy 2 will aim to build a Singaporean core of managers and supervisors. Through relevant training and targeted work experience, existing rank-and-file workers can move up to managerial and supervisory positions.
These productivity initiatives and the collective efforts from the three unions will allow us to approach the various partners - government, associations and employers with greater strength, offer more sustainable solutions and benefit more workers across the cluster.
To conclude, as a responsible labour movement, we realise that these low-wage jobs are not going anywhere. In fact, if nothing is done, they will increase in numbers over the next decade. And so will the calls for more and more foreign workers to help fill them. The solution is not necessarily to move all workers out of these positions, but to develop programmes for career advancement, to boost the earnings from these jobs to decent and respectable wages. In short, to ‘allow the worker to earn higher pay with same working hours.
I come forward to seek support from all our brothers and sisters from these three unions and our like-minded management partners to move in tandem and help our workers to progress in their jobs to earn a better living. Together, we believe that not only strength, but our survival too, lies in unity!
Thank you.
