Good morning Brothers, Sisters,
President Thana,
My fellow Central Committee members
Employers, Friends, and
Job seekers.
I am delighted to join all of you this morning at the Career Festival. This is an inaugural festival – for the very first time, we are bringing together all the different capabilities of NTUC together in this festival to serve all of you better.
It is a great start to the new year! We grew economically, slightly above expectations, by about 4%. So we ended 2024 on a good note, on a strong economy.
And with the turnout today, I’m very encouraged that in spite of the different challenges that you will face in 2025 and beyond, we stand in good stead and we have all the different strengths of our unique tripartism to meet the challenges ahead.
A special shout out to the employer partners that are here – 70 of you have booths outside. To all the mentor volunteers on my right-hand side, thank you for supporting NTUC in the new area of workforce transformation.
Even as we celebrate Singapore’s achievement in 2024 and our achievement in 2024, as I look ahead to 2025, it is with some trepidation, honestly.
We will have a new US president soon, and that potends new uncertainties, including probable disruptions in trade, in all the different tracks of tariffs that are already put on the table.
But today, I’m not going to talk too much about the challenges of 2025. Instead, I’d like to focus very much on the internal things that we can do for our workers as tripartite partners.
Evolving challenges and concerns over job security
NTUC would usually do some form of economic surveys to look at how businesses are thinking, and how workers are feeling.
It is not too surprising that about 34% of those who responded to our survey said that they are worried about job security in the foreseeable future – three months out. 34% is not a worrying number, but neither is it a very low number.
It is something that I think hangs on the minds of many Singaporeans, including businesses, and reflects the anxieties and challenges ahead.
For the workers, I can fully understand. Even in a good job market, the uncertainties of businesses, the retrenchment numbers that we have gotten last year for the first three quarters is about the same as those for the entire 2021 and 2022.
With the disruption of technologies like Generative A.I. (Gen AI), with robotic automation coming into the economy to enhance efficiency of our manufacturing processes, all these good things which are happening also lends to some of the downsides that cause anxieties.
So, brothers and sisters, whether you are a worker amidst all of us, or whether you are an employer, when we look at all these issues, I have a very simple question to ask you this morning – so what? So what do we do? Continue to worry? Or should we take proactive action as tripartite partners to take on the challenges head on?
I say take proactive action.
NTUC has actually done so five years ago when we surveyed the Industry 4.0 landscape. You would have heard me say about some of these things that new technologies will disrupt industries. It will lend great anxieties, but also afford a small country like Singapore new opportunities to disrupt and take advantage of those technologies to bring us to a new S-curve.
Otherwise, as a maturing economy, the limited opportunities of productivity will actually cause us to stagnate.
What is happening in the world today, on the one hand, is worrying. On the other hand, if we take the right mindset and take proactive action, let’s turn those anxieties into opportunities, that as partners and workers, we can work together to seize those opportunities. What do you think?
Supporting businesses through transformation
Five years ago, NTUC started the Company Training Committee (CTC) concept. We were attempting to merge the interests of businesses, workers, and the Government to create a vibrant economy.
I’m quite happy to say that the Company Training Committee concept has taken root. Over the last five years, we have helped nearly 200,000 or so workers, out of different creeds, to upskill themselves in one form or another.
At the same time, in the same period, we also started a separate pilot concept called the Job Security Council (JSC) to do job matching, job placement, career advisory, all the things that, put together, culminated in today’s Career Festival.
That was five years ago, without a clearer picture of what is facing us today in 2025. We took proactive action. Maybe we got some things wrong, but largely, we got things about right. And we are now able to bring these capabilities to the core – to the workers who are here today to look for jobs, and to the employers that can hopefully participate in this process, not just for the workers and ourselves, but for your thriving of businesses and new opportunities.
So what we have done in the last five years through the good work of all my staff, NTUC’s e2i and the team led by NTUC Assistant Secretary-General and Chief Executive Officer, Caryn Yeo, we have fueled key capabilities in career planning, in career progression, and in career prospecting. Three simple Ps, but it involves a whole colossus to build those capabilities.
Today, you see the culmination of many of the capabilities you are bringing to the tripartite mechanism in Singapore to do better in career planning, in career progression, and in career prospects.
NTUC’s e2i has built key capabilities in such areas, leveraging on technologies that are not only benefitting businesses, but also NTUC.
One of the key innovations that we have done is in career counselling. We have embarked on Generative A.I. to help our career coaches to better plan for the workers seeking our help, to better match the workers’ interests and skills profile – what they need to do to top up skills – and their aspirations.
Now, with Gen AI, we have both technology input to do all the broader surveillance of what jobs are available, what courses are available, what are the top ups that you need to do, together with the reassuring of the career coach face-to-face.
It is both technologically-enabled, and in the way that NTUC does things, we care and we come with a heart and base to help our workers.
Very well done to NTUC’s e2i! I thank all the staff at NTUC’s e2i for the very good work, and I hope that your Festival will be a roaring success.
Strengthening Whole-of-Integrated NTUC support for Youths and PMEs, starting with Career Mentoring
The other innovation that we have done in conjunction with our training ecosystem is creating a Mentor Network.
I’m very happy to welcome 120 of our mentors here! You can see our mentors ranging from the younger to the not-so-young, to the experienced. All willing to pitch their expertise in the industry back to NTUC system to coach and mentor each successive generation of PMEs or blue-collar workers that want to pivot into new possibilities for jobs. Thank you, mentors!
Well, the 120 of them present here today is only 10% of the capabilities we have set up in the NTUC Mentor Network. Today, we are proud to say that we have about 1,100 such mentors, including some industry captains and CEOs like Kerry Mok, SATS; Randall Wong, top lawyer in Singapore, Drew and Napier; Aileen, SingTel; Eugene Wong, investor – a whole range of different mentors that I hope will land more possibilities not just for the current capabilities we have set up, but branch into new innovations to not just help our traditional strength of blue-collar workers, but move more and more into the PME spaces, including the young.
As I was going around, I met Lee Wee Teck. He’s one of our mentors. Wee Teck is Head of Data at Cariuma. He says he’s on the wrong side of his forties, but as busy as he is, he stood forward and has mentored a young chap – 20-odd years old by the name of Chun Ye, who wanted in his first career to pivot out into becoming some form of a Data Scientist that he didn’t quite know where he wanted to go.
But his guidance, mentorship, the insights of the industry of being a Data Analyst, with all the practical things – not just fluffy things – like taking up courses and upskilling to enter into the area. But with the mentorship of Wee Teck, he could be focused in his directed learning.
Today, I’m glad that he is now an AI Engineer with Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS). 20-plus years old! Well done, Wee Teck, thank you for supporting NTUC!
If you look at these possibilities, we are no longer just at the realm of ideation in moving our workforce in conjunction with Industry 4.0 – what we said five years ago.
Today, the industry transformation is real – it has come onto our shores. What I said five years ago to many of you in this room has become reality.
We also said NTUC will do our utmost to partner you in workforce transformation. We are at the cusp of moving this needle to make significant impact to the workforce that has put their trust in NTUC.
We will continue our best efforts to enable all workers because we recognise that workers today, including the PMEs, requires us to ask the “so what” question. If the world is changing, we are anxious, so what can we do? We want NTUC to use our resources to proactively partner all working people – whether you are a PME; whether you are a blue-collar worker; whether you are older; whether you are younger; and maybe especially if you’re a caregiver; or women who have left the workforce; we want to partner you to enable you to have a good career of your choice or aspiration in Singapore.
We will do our very best so long as you are willing to step forward to partner us – with NTUC to chart the way forward. That is NTUC’s commitment with the working people that have put their trust in us.
But we recognise that NTUC can do what we want to do to the best of our abilities and it will still be short. Why do I say that? Why?
Because NTUC needs good employers – employers with vision, employers with good business models – to succeed, so that when their businesses succeed, they can give employment to Singaporeans, so that all of us can have a win-win ecosystem.
I’m very happy today that we have 70 employers that have come with 95 booths outside to support this tripartite effort, not just for workers’ interests, but working in the ecosystem to fulfil their own needs for talent, and for workers.
What we have done in the ecosystem to ensure that this partnership is not just of goodwill, but of convergent interests so that it’s sustainable, is the Company Training Committee. We are moving this aggressively and have innovated further with the CTC Grant.
Basically, now, if you’re an SME or even an MNC that wants to embark on industry transformation, NTUC will partner with you to the best of our abilities for you to transform operationally, technologically, and do the very best to support you in having better business. In our own interests, all I ask of our employer parnters is always this – when you succeed, please remember to take care of your workers.
With this CTC Grant, we have started to move the needle. Over 400 projects have been endorsed, approved. Over 300 plus companies have come on board to take the Operation and Technology Roadmapping into actualisation. Businesses have been transformed in many areas.
There is a company called Penanshin Group. They are a business that actually does Less-than-Container-Load almagation to do shipping. You can understand how messy that can be, right? One container, small businesses putting in – there is a lot of coordination with different customers. But I suspect that the technology base might not have been so robust. They partnered NTUC, rethought about their tracking system and rethought about their allocation system. With the data planning and the technologies available, now they can better coordinate.
Frustrated customers that do not know where their shipment is, today, can self-check on Penanshin Group’s website. They can do better businesses. Our workers in Penanshin have a better, less stressful life – don’t have to answer all the phone calls and all the potential frustrated customers – and they are more productive.
I’m glad Penanshin Group also adhered to their promise, and 59 of their workers have now benefitted with increased pay (real wages), 4% above their annual increments. So you can see that in this, it is both beneficial for the company and beneficial to the workers, to embark on this project. Win-win.
Conclusion
In the uncertainties of 2025, brothers and sisters, regardless of whether you are a businessman, a CEO, or a worker, how can we take action to make sure we overcome the different challenges and put yourselves, our unions, your companies, and Singapore at the forefront of probabilities to succeed?
Yes, we must take a humble approach. We are set on this direction. Let’s keep ourselves agile, nimble, and adapt to the changing circumstances. I hope 70-80% of what we are doing are all on the right track. But in areas where we need to fail fast and learn fast, let’s do so as partners. Reinforcing the foundation of tripartite trust that we have established, but now, building on that trust to take proactive action to put our workers at the best affordabilities of success, make sure our companies can succeed, and for our Singapore economy to thrive in a very uncertain world.
Brothers and sisters, I want to sincerely thank all of you for participating in NTUC in one form or another. Thank you for the support for this morning. I really, really appreciate all the good work that you have done.
I just want to wish you a very good, happy new year 2025. May we move forward with more confidence and achieve better outcomes for all of us as a country, as a people, businesses and its workers, for Singapore.
Thank you very much.
