Mr Francis Lim, President of UWEEI
Mr Cyrille Tan, General Secretary of UWEEI
Mdm Halimah Yacob, Executive Secretary of UWEEI
Comrades
Management Staff
Ladies and Gentlemen
The Globalisation Challenge – Win More and Lose Less
Good evening. I am pleased to join you today at the UWEEI 25th Anniversary Dinner and Dance.
1. Globalisation – Equal Oportunity but Unequal Outcomes.
The IMF/WB meeting ended in Singapore few days ago was very much about globalization. One may ask - Is globalization good for the world? If it is good, why do some Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) stage protests against globalisation? If it is no good, why didn’t we in Singapore join in to protest?
The truth is – members of the global community will always have mixed feeling towards globalization. When companies relocate their factories to other places, we blame it on globalization. When companies relocate their operations from other places to our shore, we gain from globalization. Since no economy can have absolute advantage over all other competing economies, every nation will win some and lose some investments and jobs as a result of globalisation.
So, instead of looking at the downside of globalization, we in Singapore have decided to work together as tripartite partners to make sure that we will gain more investments and jobs from globalization. We recognize that this is the only way ahead for us to grow our economy, and secure more jobs to benefit our people.
2. Manufacturing 2000.
The manufacturing industry is a good illustration of our constructive engagement with globalization. 15 years ago, our manufacturing sector was growing, but at a slower pace than the overall economy. Instead of blaming it on globalization, we decided to ride the wave of globalization to keep both manufacturing and services as the twin engines of economic growth. Spearheaded by EDB, we embarked on Manufacturing 2000 with the aim of keeping Manufacturing at 25% of our GDP.
Today, I am happy to say that Singapore has more than achieved our target. Total value-add in the manufacturing sector grew at a compound annual growth rate of 5.7% over the 10 years from 1995 to 2004, surpassing GDP growth. Last year, manufacturing value-add grew by 8.6%, outstripping the economic growth of 5.7% and accounting for some 28% of our GDP.
More importantly, manufacturing also provided 448,000 jobs - about 22% of all jobs in Singapore. Indeed, we have succeeded in strengthening our position as a global manufacturing hub.
3. Fast Pace of Restructuring
Competing in the world of globalisation, we recognize that it is not possible to stop companies from relocating their factories and retrenching our workers. However, what we can do and must do is to keep making ourselves more productive, more capable and more adaptable, so that more companies will expand existing plants and build new ones. Our constructive and pro-active strategy is serving us well.
In electronics manufacturing, we now contribute about 10% of the worldwide semiconductor wafer foundry output and 30% of the global production of hard disk drives. There are 14 Semiconductor wafer fabrication plants (including two 12-inch fabs), 20 assembly and test (A&T) operations, and 40 Integrated Circuit (IC) design centres in our industry. Among them are the world's top 3 wafer foundries companies, the world's top 3 sub-contract assembly and test (A&T) companies, and 4 of the world's top 10 fabless Integrated Circuit (IC)design companies.
4. Manufacturing 2018.
Looking ahead to the future, our commitment to strengthen manufacturing as a twin engine of economic growth alongside services is here to stay. By year 2018, EDB aims to double manufacturing value-added to S$80 billion, and double output to S$300 billion. Manufacturing is projected to generate 15,000 direct new jobs each year, with another 6,500 jobs in supporting services sectors.
To succeed, our manufacturing sector will have no choice but to continue to undergo rapid restructuring. While the bad news is that some jobs in the electronics sector will continue to shift to lower cost locations; the good news is that many new jobs of higher value-add and better quality will be created here. The challenge is for us to keep up the pace of upgrading our industry and our workers, so that more of our workers affected by relocation of factories can take on these new and better jobs.
Some employers may doubt the ability of our workers to adapt to the new work environment. Likewise, some of our workers may lack the self confidence in picking up new skills fast enough. While the concerns of workers and companies are not unfounded, there are enough evidences to show that as long as we work closely together as tripartite partners, globalization can lead to win-win-win outcome for our workers, for Singapore based companies, and for our national economy.
5. Examples.
Let me share with you the experience of some of our workers. Mr Chua Hak Seng was a storekeeper with International Video Product (IVP). He was retrenched in Nov 1997. With the help of NTUC and UWEEI, he was job-matched to STMicroelectronics to become a wafer fab specialist. Mr Chua went through 5 months of training under the Skills Re-development Programme and became a Wafer Fab Specialist in 1998. With a supporting employer, he was given further re-training and up-skilling during his years with STMicroelectronics. Because of his good performance, he was promoted three times since. Today, Mr Chua is a Senior Manufacturing Specialist earning a much better salary then when he was a storekeeper with IVP.
Mr Chua is not alone. There are 4 other workers who were retrenched by IVP. All of them have adapted well to wafer fabrication operations. Mdm Rahmah Bte Abdul Rahim, a Senior Manufacturing Specialist with STMicroelectronics, has also performed well and received 3 promotions. Similarly for Mdm Azizah Bte Abdul Rahim, who has been promoted to be a QC Supervisor.
6. STMicroelectronics.
Mr Chua, Mdm Rahman and Mdm Azizah were not the first workers to be affected by industry restructuring. They won’t be the last either. As I am speaking here tonight, NTUC, UWEEI and STMicroelectronics are working closely together under the SRP to re-skill 280 operators and 60 technicians so that they can be redeployed from backend production of semiconductor devices to front-end wafer fabrication. I am told that 16 of them have completed re-training and are deployed as wafer fab specialists. Congratulations :-)
Such pro-active efforts and timely upgrading of our workers is commendable. It protects the interest of our economy by enabling the industry to upgrade fast enough to remain competitive. At the same time, it protects the interest of our workers by enabling them to take on new and better paying jobs as we restructure our industry.
I would like to specially mention STMicroelectronics for being a responsible and caring employer. You have chosen to re-skill the workers instead of just retrenching those doing old jobs and hire new ones to take on new jobs. We look forward to working with many more companies to adopt such an enlightened approach. Tonight, I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the close co-operation of many partners who have worked tirelessly on this project over the past 7 months –
- STM Training Manager (Toh Tuck Wai)
- UWEEI Branch Chairman and 2nd Assistant General Secretary (Lim Swee Hock)
- UWEEI IRO (Steven Goh)
- NTUC Skills Development Department officer (Siah Choon Seng)
- Support of WDA officer (Ang Hui Xia), ITE officer (Low Sock Hwee) and NTUC LearningHub (May Koh Hwei Mei).
7. Conclusion.
Globalisation is here to stay. We cannot try to stop the train of globalisation. What we can do and must do is to try to minimise the downside and maximise the upside of globalisation, by upgrading our industry and re-training our people fast enough to remain productive and employable. This is not easy, and will only get more challenging with keener competition and faster pace of change in future. However, I am confident that in a world of unequal outcome, through the close partnership of the labour movement, employers and government agencies, Singapore can come up top. Let us work together to create a brighter future for all.
Happy 25th Anniversary to UWEEI. Thank you.
*****
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