Mr President, the Singapore National Trades Union Congress delegation joins other delegates to congratulate you on being elected to preside over the 95th Session of the International Labour Conference.
Employment Relationship
Mr President, we welcome the timely discussion at this ILC to address the challenge posed by changing employment relationship. All over the world, union membership is on the decline. One of the reasons for this decline is the increase in atypical workers who could not be represented in the traditional framework.
In Singapore, atypical workers such as contract and part-time workers are increasing, as companies try to be more competitive and make more efficient use of manpower. In 1997, 5% of employed persons were atypical workers. By 2004, the figure had shot up to 8.5%. We expect part-time and contract work to become a regular feature here. The Singapore labour movement has bucked the world wide trend of declining membership with union membership doubling in the last 10 years to 460,000 today. This year, we have set ourselves a target of achieving 1 million membership by the year 2015. We hope to achieve this by targeting atypical workers; new growth sectors of the economy, such as info communications and biosciences; and younger workers. Similarly, unions worldwide will have to look into creative ways of organising and representing this group of workers.
We strongly believed that one way to appeal and help atypical workers is to provide for skills training, as employers, especially temporary employment agencies, are not likely provide training for them. The NTUC initiated the Skills Redevelopment Programme in 1996, an employer-based training programme to help lower skilled workers to upgrade or expand their skills to meet the changing demand of the job market. The government took it over as a national programme two years later. Under the “Surrogate Employer Programme”, NTUC acted as surrogate employers for non-Singaporeans or workers who want to embark on self-sponsored training that is not supported by their employers. Over the last six years, the NTUC supported over 200,000 training places for our workers under the SRP.
Occupational Safety and Health
Mr President, words cannot adequately express how the labour movement in Singapore welcome the ILO’s emphasis and efforts in standard setting on Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) in recent years. Indeed, it is of paramount importance that our workers’ right to safe and healthy workplaces are upheld.
In Singapore, efforts to achieve the target of reducing Singapore’s present occupational fatality rate by half by the year 2015 are underway. We are particularly pleased that our advocacy for changes to the legislative framework to better enhance the safety and health protection of our workers resulted in the enactment of the Workplace Safety and Health Act (WSHA) on 1 Mar 2006. This Act, which replaces the Factories Act, has an extended scope of coverage to all workplaces, ensuring that all stakeholders play an active role in creating a safer and healthier work environment for our workers. We have also called for the government to set up a safety hotline for workers to call should they come across or be subjected to unsafe work conditions, and are pleased that our suggestion was taken up last year.
The collaboration of the tripartite partners – the government, the union and the employers has been effective in bringing down workplace fatalities over the years. We will continue to actively contribute to raise OSH standards in Singapore.
In Conclusion
The ILO remains the only international organization that brings together the tripartite social partners to engage in meaningful dialogue and cooperation. Let us continue to mobilize global tripartism to work towards the effective addressing of the social dimension of globalisation and realise our goal of Decent Work. With this note, I wish all a fruitful conference.
Thank you.
* A typical Workers = Full-time Temporary + Part-time Permanent + Part-time Temporary
