Dear President Brother John, Secretary General Brother Lim Swee Say, Chairman of Membership Committee Brother Chai Kun, members of NTUC Central Committee, Union Leaders, brothers and sisters, good evening and welcome to U Summit 2011!
Tonight we shall share with you two stories of dreams.
The second, Voyage de la Vie or the journey of life, is the timeless tale of a boy’s dreams. The boy joins a mysterious lantern keeper. This lantern keeper brings him on to a mesmerising voyage that teaches him that it is the journey and not the destination that gives life its meaning.
The first story is of a dream seen by Singapore’s union leaders, many of them in this theatre today.
You saw a dream in 2007, when we had 470,000 members. The dream was to evolve us into an inclusive labour movement, one that would be there for all Collars, all Ages, all Nationalities, and for all 3-generations of workforce.
Leaders at each of our 61 unions represent these members and look after them, at work, live and play.
At work, our union leaders ensured the wage increase at unionised companies during 2006 to 2010 was higher than the national average.
We set-up professional chapters to support members like you and me, to progress in respective expertise areas.
And, to ensure our youngsters are work-ready, world-ready, life-ready, we launched nEbO in 2007. It is 45,000-strong youth movement now! Together with Young NTUC, U Family and U Live, it forms a U Community for life.
For our members’ evolving Live and Play needs, we’ve more merchant partners today than ever before – over 250 of them. And we’re online now with Plus! Big Deals.
Hence, it is not surprising that we’re growing fast – our rate of net membership growth in 2010 was a swift 5%. This year we have surpassed it with an 8% net growth. This year, our unions have recruited over 10 members every hour, every day of the year!
Let’s celebrate the story of the audacious dream by our union leaders to achieve 650,000 members by 2011, and 1 million members by 2015. So, let’s sit back, relax and enjoy the evening.
