Brother Guy Ryder, Director-General of the International Labour Organization;
Distinguished overseas guests;
Brother Lim Swee Say, Minister, Ministry of Manpower (MOM), Singapore;
Brother Robert Yap, President, Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF);
SNEF Council members and management participants;
Sister Diana Chia, President, Singapore National Trades Union Congress (NTUC);
NTUC Central Committee Members;
Sisters and Brothers of the Singapore Labour Movement and tripartite partners
Good morning and on behalf of the Singapore tripartite partners, it is my pleasure to welcome all of you to the International Forum on Tripartism, with the theme, “Tripartism for Sustainable Growth and Development”.
Purpose of the International Forum on Tripartism
The Singapore tripartite partners jointly organise this International Forum on Tripartism to commemorate two special occasions:
This forum will allow more than 800 tripartite participants, especially our younger ones, from over 30 countries and regions to share our experiences and views on the key topics and global tripartite models. Although our contexts may be different, we can nevertheless still glean good practices and ideas from one another and apply these in context when we go home.
Thus, let me thank our distinguished speakers from the United States, Barbados, Denmark, Ireland and Japan who have joined us today to share their countries’ experiences on leveraging tripartism to achieve sustainable development and growth. Particularly, Professor Sarosh Kuruvilla, who teaches industrial relations at the Industrial and Labor Relations School of Cornell University and has consulted for the ILO for many years, will be presenting on the global trends in tripartism.
Why Tripartism is Valuable to Singapore
Tripartism has been one of Singapore’s unique competitive advantages to achieve economic growth and social development in the last 50 years. It is one key driving force behind Singapore’s transformation from a third world to a first world country.
We are a small country with few natural resources. Our main resource is our people.
To attract good investments and companies and create good jobs for our people, we have to create our own competitive advantage. We have to give assurance to investors and companies that our workforce is more innovative, more productive and more disciplined.
In short, we do not compete on us being a lower cost business environment, but we compete on us being a higher value-add destination.
The philosophy that we will want to distinguish ourselves – where the Singapore Labour Movement and the business sector here will not just compete against each other for the same pie, but to share the same philosophy to keep growing a bigger pie for all to share – is not something new. I believe we all share these ideals in our respective countries. Whether we call it tripartism or social dialogue.
But the challenge for us all is not just understanding the philosophy and the concept but putting this in practice and making it work for the people of our countries.
To work together for the common good of all requires that special ingredient call “trust”.
Trust can only come about through everyone taking a long-term perspective to the tripartite relationship. Where everyone accepts that we are in this together for the long haul. That we will not take advantage of another party. That we are working together for the common objective of bringing about the betterment of our country and our people.
I must say that Singapore did not start off with this rosy picture 50 years ago. We had our share of industrial actions and strife. We had unions and employers who saw one another as enemies rather than partners. But over time and together with the Government, the unions and employers realised that we should not be fighting with one another as the consequences were detrimental to our people and our nation.
Additionally, facing and overcoming common challenges and crises head on together through the years gave all three parties the confidence and trust in one another. For example, the economic crises from the 1980s, to 1997 to 2008, and through 9/11 and SARS, we found opportunities from these crises to forge a common understanding and strengthen the trust among us. We shared a common goal – we want Singapore and our people to come out stronger and more resilient.
Having strong leadership in all tripartite partners, who are focused on the long term, further reinforce the trust amongst all parties. We are all equal partners.
Having continuity in government policies and a good government that cares for the people also helped in the process of building trust.
But we must never take this positive state of affairs for granted.
Strong tripartite partnership needs to be carefully nurtured over time through real actions.
We now need to groom the next generation of tripartite leaders and imbue them with the same ethos of constructive engagement.
In the afternoon, my tripartite colleagues will share how Singapore has benefitted from tripartism and how tripartism has evolved in the last 50 years to meet the complexities and myriad of challenges presented to us as we progressed from a third world nation to the first.
Challenges Ahead for the Labour Movement
Every economic challenge is also an opportunity for the tripartite partners to forge even closer bonds to overcome our common challenges together.
As we all know, in the near term, our economy may be facing some headwinds. In the longer term, we must be prepared that new business models, new employment models and new aspirations of the workforce are all going to disrupt the conventional business and employment models. All these mean that we must take a fundamental look at how the Singapore Labour Movement must evolve to take care of our workers. We will talk more about these during our NTUC’s National Delegates’ Conference in the next few days.
The role of ILO in Promoting Social Justice and Tripartism
At this junction, I would also like to acknowledge the kind presence of Brother Guy Ryder, the Director-General of the ILO at our forum.
Founded in 1919, the ILO is unique as it is the only United Nation agency with a tripartite structure. The ILO has a mandate for the promotion of social justice in the world and tries to do so through promoting rights at work, encouraging decent employment opportunities, enhancing social protection and strengthening dialogue on work-related issues.
The mandate of social justice is something that Singapore readily identifies with, as we strive to be an inclusive society. According to the Director-General, access to work is crucial to achieving social justice. Indeed, as we look at around the world, it is unfortunate that we can see quite a number of examples of how a lack of job opportunities and decent work have created a great social divide between the rich and the poor and led to social unrests. In particular, youths in some countries are disillusioned as jobs evaded them and they could not see any future. Without concerted tripartite efforts to work towards social justice, many issues of today will not go away.
The role of ILO is crucial in re-directing tripartite constituents’ attention and focus back to its mandate of promoting social justice at both the international and national level, without which the businesses of the day such as casualisation and informalisation of the workforce, will gradually become the order of the day, to the detriment of workers.
As ILO approaches its centenary in 2019, the Director-General has proposed a “future of work” initiative to advance its mandate for social justice. This will require deep tripartite reflection on the future of work in an increasingly globalised economy.
Clearly, we can see the future of work is an issue that all nations must pay more urgent attention to, and that tripartism at both international level and the national level, and even the sectoral level, is essential to tackle this very important issue. In Singapore, the tripartite partners have started addressing the future of work through the SkillsFuture initiatives, which will be shared in greater detail during Singapore’s presentation.
Conclusion
As Singapore looks forward to SG100 in 50 years, we need to continuously learn from the ILO and other countries on their best practices and ideas to strengthen tripartism and allow tripartism to permeate to the sectoral levels. I look forward to a day of interesting sharing, robust discussions and active participation. With this note, I wish all a fruitful forum.
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