President John, NTUC Central Committee Members, Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen,
1 Our labour movement has been effective in the past 40 years. While union membership worldwide is on the decline, our membership is steadily increasing. From 234,000 members in 1994, membership grew to 337,000 in 2001 and today it stands at 450,000. In other words, between 1994 and today, membership has practically doubled.
2 We have worked with our tripartite partners to provide an environment where there can be good jobs for our workers. In so doing, we have maintained No. 1 ranking for our workforce for the last 25 years. This is no mean feat and all credit goes to the combined efforts of the NTUC family.
3 However, the last few years have shown that the environment is undergoing fundamental changes. Between hits from Asian Financial Crisis to SARS, globalisation has forced many businesses to restructure. Economic growth has slowed down to a lower level and will be so for the foreseeable future.
4 The labour movement have responded decisively to ensure that the well-being of workers is looked after and implemented numerous programmes to tide our workers through this difficult period. Some examples include:
- Started NTUC Joblink to assist workers in their job search.
- Initiated Skills Redevelopment Programme to support workers’ training needs.
- Operated the Surrogate Employer Programme for employed workers whose employers do not provide training.
- For the unemployed union members, we use STEER and other schemes, such as place-and-train programmes.
- NTUC Education and Training Fund was set up to provide additional funding support for union members’ training.
- Launched SkillsSave programme, a portable individual learning account with three NTUC Cooperatives.
- Pushed for wage restructuring. Two out of three key National Wages Council recommendations implemented for 66% of workforce in unionised firms, compared to 18% in non-unionised firms.
- Pushed for Medishield reform and promoted portable medical benefits.
- Pushed for employers to make Occupational Safety and Health a key priority, which culminated in the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) enacting a holistic Occupational Safety and Health Framework.
- Provided financial relief for low income members. NTUC alone provided over $8 million over the last 5 years in financial aid to members. Individual unions have additional schemes to supplement this.
- NTUC Cooperatives provided over $270 million in savings and benefits for union members and workers.
5 All these programmes have helped our workers ride the storms and maintain our position as a leading workforce.
6 However, more challenges lie ahead. Unemployment, though not as high as a few years ago, is still higher compared to pre-Asian Financial Crisis days. More importantly, structural unemployment – unemployment due to lack of relevant skills – is increasing. Our resident workforce is also ageing as life expectancies rise. But older workers are increasingly vulnerable to retrenchment and unemployment, at a time when they really need to work to save up for retirement. The real wages of low wage workers have also stagnated.
7 What does this mean for the labour movement going forward? We need to tackle these trends resolutely as a united labour movement. More than ever, we need the combined efforts of all of us, NTUC, unions, cooperatives, tripartite partners, in order to guide our workforce through these increasingly complex challenges.
8 We have focused a lot of effort on coming up with new programmes and strategies in the past. So we already have many good programmes today. It is now timely to also focus on how we can implement our programmes even more effectively as a labour movement collectively. The focus for us now is to enhance the alignment and cooperation within the NTUC family, to deliver on common key priorities that we can all agree on as a labour movement.
9 The purpose of the discussions over the next two days at this Pre-ODC is to share and discuss some of these priorities with all of you.
10 What are some of these priorities? There are two immediate ones: Jobs for Singaporeans and Membership Development.
11 The presentations later will cover this in greater detail, but let me take this opportunity to share my own views on these issues.
Jobs for Singaporeans
12 Jobs for Singaporeans have been and will always be a key priority for us. Our main concern is to help the more vulnerable workers. This includes low-wage workers, workers with lower education levels and skills, older workers and the long term unemployed.
Low Wage Workers
13 We first raised our concerns on low wage workers when we noted the widening income gap. This widening income gap is due to the forces of globalisation. With greater ease in the movement of goods, services and people across countries, companies here have to compete on the global market for top talent and raise the wages accordingly to international levels to attract them. Similarly, workers in the low wage groups will be competing with workers doing similar work in low cost locations like China, so wages will be suppressed.
14 Our concern is not so much the widening income gap but the quality of life for the lower income. In our view, it is important for workers to be gainfully employed with decent pay and enjoy a quality of life that keeps pace with the higher income.
15 We believe that any viable solution must be win-win for both employers and workers. Ensuring decent wages should not come at the expense of business viability. Otherwise, any efforts might be counter-productive and we may end up forcing companies out of business, or out of Singapore. Either way, workers lose out on jobs.
16 We firmly believe that the more productive and permanent way to ensure decent wages for workers is through Job Redesign. This is why NTUC launched the Job Re-creation Programme (JRP) in March this year. The central idea behind the programme is not to compete with low cost countries on cost, but to compete on higher value added per worker.
17 Through JRP, we aim to increase the amount of output each worker can deliver by redesigning their jobs, so that they can be paid more. It is not an easy task but we are achieving some good results through our persistence and the cooperation of forward-looking employers. To date, some 2,500 workers have benefited from the JRP, with over 5,000 job vacancies identified. Existing jobs have been redesigned and new some new jobs created in sectors such as landscaping, cleaning, security, marine, education, healthcare and public transport.
18 NTUC also recently launched the Customer-Centric Initiative or CCI to increase service quality. With enhanced service levels, patronage and therefore revenue will increase for companies, and workers can also stand to enjoy better pay. We have already gotten 20 companies and NTUC Cooperatives from the retail sector to commit to CCI. This can potentially benefit 30% of the retail workforce.
19 We firmly believe that strategies such as the JRP and CCI are the way to go. Workers benefit from more meaningful employment with better pay. Employers benefit by having more Singaporeans to provide a stable core of workers as well as increased profitability. At the national level, we benefit from having a pipeline of local workers and retain a local skills base for key industries. The Government has realised this, and now both JRP and CCI are key programmes supported by the Government.
20 The approach that we have taken is precisely what the Ministry of Manpower means when it talks about Workfare.
21 Nevertheless, beyond the dignity of work and self-reliance, we also push for wealth distribution policies that ensures that the lower income enjoy a quality of life higher than that their wages alone would buy. These come in the form of housing and medical subsidies, and periodic top-ups in CPF and issuance of Singapore Shares, and transport vouchers.
Older Workers
22 The latest labour market report from MOM showed that even though sustained economic growth brought with it an increase in overall employment creation, the unemployment rate among older workers remained high.
23 Most employers think that older workers are less productive, less adaptable and more expensive. So instead of thinking how they can make best use of older workers’ positive attributes, such as patience, interpersonal skills and reliability, they go for the easy way out by looking for younger or foreign workers.
24 However, there are some enlightened employers out there who have found that once they put their minds to it, there is much value in giving older workers a chance and using them for their positive attributes. You would have read some accounts of these employers, such as Tien Wah Press, in the newspapers. Our own NTUC FairPrice found that by leveraging on the interpersonal skills of older workers and using machinery to assist in the physically demanding parts of the work, older workers can be just as, if not more valuable than younger ones. Even a small union like IRASSU has made a contribution. It is employing a 67-year old on part time basis to help with the union’s administration.
25 The problem is that the majority of employers do not think like NTUC FairPrice and Tien Wah Press, or IRASSU.
26 We therefore have to intervene and change attitudes of employers and even consumers alike. We want to work with positive employers willing to do more in hiring and retaining older workers to help them address any issues that they may encounter. We will have to work on what are the specific jobs that can be redesigned to suit older workers by utilising their strengths. This way, workers can continue to remain in the same company, but perhaps doing a different job with a different pay. I call upon employers to come forth to work with us and give older workers a chance.
27 We also need to critically look at our training methods. We have to adjust the way we conduct training so that it is more customised for older workers. We also want to work with employers who are willing to train their workers beyond their current job requirements so that they are ready for any future jobs that they might be asked to undertake in the company, as part of business restructuring.
28 The population is ageing rapidly. We have to act now, and we need to act resolutely. More importantly, we need our tripartite partners to be firmly committed to this cause.
Membership Development
29 Membership is the lifeblood of the labour movement. The ability to mobilise our membership base is our key strength.
30 Our membership is growing steadily, going against worldwide trends of declining union membership. Large union federations in some countries are even on the verge of breaking up. This shows that our approach towards managing labour relations in Singapore is correct and effective.
31 But we should not be complacent. There are still issues to be addressed.
32 First of all, while we are recruiting our fair share of younger members, the education profile of our members is generally lower than that of the workforce. We need to step up our efforts to recruit younger members with better education profiles to join the labour movement.
33 In addition, many of our younger members are in General Branch (GB) and not Ordinary Branch (OB), and recent growth in membership has been largely fueled by GB membership.
34 Let me make clear that it does not mean we have not done much to organise workers into Ordinary Branch. The old branches that we have had used to have several thousand members. Today the companies have restructured, and do more applied research and development, and product development than in production. So the numbers of production workers have shrunk, and so union members in these branches have fallen. The fact that we have achieved a steady increase in Ordinary Branch members means that we have organised new branches. We can, and should do more such organisation.
35 If not, if we do not provide industrial relations services to those who are in the General Branch, then all they would look forward to are social benefits. Will this be sustainable, with all the other benefits offered in the market? Will they resign their membership the moment a better deal comes along? We need to offer them something more, something that will bind them emotionally to other young members and the labour movement.
36 We therefore need to find new ways to reach out, engage and organise the younger members, especially those in the GB membership base. To do this, we need to find out their interests, concerns and needs, which could be very different from what the previous generation of union members wanted.
37 The younger generation likes designer coffee from Starbucks, the older generation enjoys their coffee at the local kopitiam. To continue to be relevant to the workforce, we need to keep our kopitiams, but set up more Starbucks. In other words, we may need more than one standard way of reaching to the newer generation, besides the traditional method of engaging OB members that we are all used to.
38 Many younger workers are also in sectors not normally covered by our unions. We have to find new ways of organising them.
39 Young NTUC was set up to engage younger members and reach out to the younger workforce in new ways. Many of your unions have also formed youth chapters. The set up is still new and getting up to speed, but its role is important. I urge all of you to contribute ideas on how we can better support this youth movement, and reach out more effectively to the younger members to bond them to the labour movement. In the end, it is not just about Reaching Out to the Young, it is about ensuring the future relevance and vitality of the labour movement.
Conclusion
40 We have shown through our past track record that as a labour movement, we are always willing to take difficult challenges head on. We have introduced numerous keynote programmes like JRP, SRP, Job matching, Occupational Safety and Health, just to name a few. These have been effective in improving the well-being of workers.
41 All these programmes require resources. Hence the NTUC Central Committee have decided that we have to raise our membership fees with effect from 1 January 2006. We have delayed this increase for awhile, but going forward, a fee increase will enable us to do more for our members.
42 What I have highlighted are just some of the key priorities for the labour movement going forward. With better clarity, we can work together as one labour movement to see how we can all contribute to these shared objectives, whether you are from the unions or the cooperatives.
43 We always strive to do the right and effective things, and not just take the easy way out. This is what our labour movement has stood for and we should keep this spirit alive going forward. The road is not going to be easy, but if we persevere, we can build a better tomorrow for our members and the workers.
