By Jonathan Tan
Underscoring the strength of the Labour Movement’s (LM) network and the unique brand of tripartism that is at its core, the NTUC Ordinary Delegates’ Conference 2017 (ODC) featured a special LM Conversations dialogue.
The session saw close to 1,000 union leaders and representatives from unionised companies, NTUC Social Enterprises, U Associate, U SME (small- and medium-sized enterprises) and U FSE (freelancers and self-employed) partners engage tripartite leaders on topics that matter to workers.
The session saw Minister for Manpower Lim Swee Say, Minister for Health Gan Kim Yong, Minister for Education (Schools) and Second Minister for Transport Ng Chee Meng, Minister for Education (Higher Education and Skills) and Second Minister for Defence Ong Ye Kung and Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, Second Minister for Home Affairs and Second Minister for Manpower Josephine Teo and Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF) President Robert Yap share their perspectives on various topics.
These included the importance of tripartism to Singapore, lifelong learning for workers, the role of social enterprises and national manpower policies such as the Industry Transformation Maps (ITMs).
Here are the key highlights:
Tripartism
“This strong symbiotic relationship between the ruling party and NTUC has enabled us to work together and strengthen the working relationship. What’s important for us to recognise is that as a Labour Movement, we want to support a Government that is pro-people. As a Government, we must support a Labour Movement that is pro-worker. As long as we have a pro-people Government and a pro-worker Labour Movement working together with a strong symbiotic relationship, I believe that the future of tripartism will be bright… The end objective has always got to be improving the lives of people for the better.” - Minister for Manpower Lim Swee Say
“We are in a very unique tripartite relationship that we must protect, cherish and transform to be ready for the future. We employers pledge full support to this tripartite movement, and by working together, we can all have a better future.” - SNEF President Robert Yap
“The strength of Singapore’s tripartism took many years for us to build. This is the important part of it - the bond and the trust that we have in one another, especially during crises. And always bearing in mind the importance of tripartism and how can we be fair and equitable to our workers while making sure that our enterprises can survive and thrive so that our workers can continue to have good jobs… This doesn’t happen naturally and takes a lot of effort from all of us to grow the relationship, deepen the trust between our leaders at every level all the way down to every member of our unions.” – Minister for Health Gan Kim Yong
Lifelong Learning
“[Through new methods such as applied learning], we are trying to reduce the overemphasis on academics and promote the intrinsic joy of learning that is needed for lifelong learning. [This will help] whether you are a student or a worker and getting our kids out of the classroom and applying their skills so that they can train that innate curiosity to explore, discover and make something of themselves, contribute to society and hopefully in their whole life journey, create good business opportunities and good jobs for Singapore.” – Minister for Education (Schools) Ng Chee Meng
“SkillsFuture is about discovering [a] passion for what you like to do. Second, you must be determined to master it. Third, chances are, you will be spending your whole life mastering it. We are building up that system to support you in mastering whatever you set your mind to.
I have always wanted to mobilise our educational resources to do training for workers. Why? Because I think we have built up a very strong pillar of employers training our workers. That is a key strength of our system. We have also built up a strong industry base of private sector training for workers. This second pillar is also very strong. I have always felt that the system is not complete, and that third pillar is our institutes of higher learning (IHLs), like universities, polytechnics and institutes of technical education, to also train workers. These IHLs are also undergoing transformation, where they are going to be institutes of lifelong learning.” – Minister for Education (Higher Education and Skills) Ong Ye Kung
Social Enterprises
“We can certainly look for opportunities to collaborate with social enterprises and carve out more space where they can contribute and do well. We are happy to find opportunities to develop specific sectors such as senior care and nursing homes, for example. These are areas where we need to quickly develop our capacity and capability. I have also told NTUC Health and other leaders in aged care services to see whether they can also provide training for healthcare staff, especially home care staff and caregivers so that they can take care of seniors at home. This is one of the responsibilities of social enterprises..” - Minister for Health Gan Kim Yong
Industry Transformation
“With the ITMs making every job a better job, and SkillsFuture making every worker a better worker, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) will try to match every better worker to every better job. Again, can MOM, NTUC or employers do it alone? They have to do it together.” – Minister for Manpower Lim Swee Say
“In the journey towards industry transformation, the most important component is jobs and skills. The transformation at the company level and adoption at the individual level has to go hand-in-hand… It will be difficult, but we must be determined because the two must move in step. Companies must transform, workers must adapt. Only when the two come together will we be able to see some real progress.
How far and how deep our industry transformation can go has a lot to do with a company’s attitude and how they value workers. Not just thinking of them as a human resource, but as human capital that can be grown. This is where we must work together to strengthen the human resource capacity within all our companies.” – Second Minister for Manpower Josephine Teo
