SM's meeting with pilots: What happened at the Istana
By Zuraidah Ibrahim
'You play straight with me, I play straight with you. You play
ducks and drakes with me, I play ducks and drakes with you.' -- SM
Lee Kuan Yew
AS THE guests stepped into the pristine hallways of the Istana last
Thursday afternoon, it was clear from their expectant faces that
they were not there on one of those routine diplomatic goodwill
visits.
This was no courtesy call.
The 14 Singapore Airlines pilots - a carefully selected mix of
unionists ousted from leadership last November and their successors
- were first ushered into a drawing room.
Some sat armed with files. Others waited with folded arms.
Eventually, they were shepherded up to the chandelier-draped
Sheares Room. Several paused at the bottom of the stairs, staring
curiously through glass doors into a roomful of journalists.
Upstairs, they were about to face the man who had served them a
series of public rebukes over the past few months.
He was after 'the principals and the ringleaders' behind the ouster
of the union leadership, he had said.
'If they play this game, there will be broken heads,' he said on
another occasion.
'Think carefully,' he cautioned them later, suspecting that the
pilots were on a collision course with management.
That Thursday afternoon, Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew began with an
explanation.
'I decided to take up this issue since I've been involved with
Singapore Airlines from the start,' he said.
In case the pilots needed reminding, he pointed out that it was he
who had secured the pact for SIA's first and most lucrative route
then to London. It was he who had asked for Changi to be built,
despite expert studies favouring Paya Lebar. It was he who had seen
the airline through its turbulent early years.
'So,' he said, 'I have no intention for it to go down'.
If the pilots had anticipated facing an uncompromising force, they
were right.
But if they had feared that this determination would extend to
siding completely with SIA's management, they were wrong.
Instead, he gave his word, several times, that SIA management would
be put right.
'There will be no sacred cows,' he said, meaning this clearing of
the way of past agreements and positions would probably apply
equally to the union as it would to management.
In the two-hour exchange that followed, he also gave them a
tutorial on industrial relations, what it meant to be an effective
union, and the importance of non-confrontational, cooperative
labour-management relations within Singapore's formula for
success.
He came to power on the back of union support, he recounted to
those in need of a history lesson. As a lawyer new to politics, he
had done work for unions for free. His pro-union credentials were
as unimpeachable as his pro-business record, he appeared to be
saying.
But what he could not countenance was an adversarial relationship
that could bring Singapore down.
Thus, he reasoned with the delegation, to win their minds rather
than break their heads.
First, however, there was a reading of the riot act to one Captain
Ryan Goh.
The master politician was at work.
You were the prime mover, were you not, behind the machinations to
vote against the union leadership, he asked.
This, even though you were on the very council of the Air Line
Pilots Association-Singapore (Alpa-S)?
That fateful ouster was what had brought the pilots that afternoon
to the Istana.
Alpa-S - which guards jealously its status as an independent union
that stays out of the tripartite loop - booted out its leaders
after rueing the wage cuts that they had accepted and members had
earlier endorsed.
The pilots agreed to the lower pay during the Sars outbreak when
the airline was bleeding. But after it made a stunning turnaround a
quarter later, a whispering campaign began about the union being
weak. The larger battle ahead - negotiating a new collective
agreement then in its last days - needed stronger stomachs, the
sentiment went.
Reading from a file, Mr Lee pulled out the following facts about
Captain Goh.
A Malaysian with permanent residence status here, he had accepted
Australian PR in 2002, moved his wife and children to Perth,
shipped his car and sold his flat.
You told someone from IE Singapore that the grass had stopped
growing in Singapore, did you not, he asked.
He turned to one of the pilots and asked if he knew the Malaysian
had bought a house in Australia and had this option to bail
out.
No, the person answered.
'No?' repeated Mr Lee.
'That's deception, isn't it?' he asked Capt Goh.
The pilot in the hot seat tried to defend himself but it was too
late. The line in the sand between him and the Singaporeans had
been drawn for him.
'My daughter is still in school here,' he tried saying, adding this
showed he still had roots in Singapore.
But wasn't that because she did not like school in Australia and
came back, Mr Lee shot back calmly.
Silence.
The castigation, no doubt a tactic of divide-and-rule, also
established a more significant point: It is not up to PRs or other
foreigners to get into union matters and play around with decisions
that affect the rest of Singaporeans.
Capt Goh had tried to undermine the interests of SIA and Singapore,
he said. 'If Singapore goes down, you go down,' he told the
Singaporeans across the table. 'He doesn't go down.'
With that out of the way, he laid out what he wanted to achieve out
of the meeting: a fresh start.
'You play straight with me, I play straight with you. You play
ducks and drakes with me, I play ducks and drakes with you,' he
told them.
'Tell me whether we can cooperate.'
Yes, they could tell him one thing and act another way, but he was
not interested in that.
'I don't hold you to blame for everything. Nor is the management
responsible for all the things that have gone wrong. 'I want to
create a new partnership of trust and cooperation, not
confrontation,' he said.
The pilots needed to understand what was at stake. When members
ousted their leaders, their actions jarred and suggested they were
clueless about the environment they operated in: An economy on the
remake trying to ease its cost pressures and an aviation industry
that will be forever changed by the wringer it went through these
last few years.
SIA did not need hostile industrial relations that would weigh it
down at a time when the connectivity that the airline and Changi
provided was facing intense competition. Without that connectivity
that other parts of the economy were premised upon, Singapore would
suffer.
'So it puzzles me. Pilots are intelligent people. How is it you are
out of touch?' he asked rhetorically.
It was partly because, someone had told him, he said, pilots were
out of the country half the time. Partly also, they were out of the
know because they were not under the National Trades Union
Congress, which would have kept members apprised of the slightest
twitch of its trouble-on-the-horizon barometer.
Whatever the case, he set the parameters for future moves.
All National Wages Council recommendations must be accepted if the
airline was to achieve flexibility and nimbleness to outlast the
competition.
Wages would have to be as variable as possible. Profit-sharing must
factor in return on capital. Retrenchment benefits must be capped
at 25 years. Medical benefits would no longer be fully paid for, a
bitter pill almost all Singaporean workers have already swallowed,
some as far back as a decade ago.
But all these changes did not mean the pilots were being sold down
the river. They will be paid market rates and when there are
extras, they will get more, he explained.
'Now, I want to hear what you have to say,' he said after an
hour.
Over the next, the pilots vented their grievances, imploring for
understanding.
Captain Mok Hin Choon, the new president of Alpa-S, said the
company had to reflect and see if it could bring along its people,
pointing out that even its NTUC-related unions were unhappy.
'Trust has been missing for the last few years,' he said, adding
that 'it takes two hands to clap'.
Out of the bag leapt their biggest bugbear - the overseas-based
pilots. The company kept rebuffing their proposals to relook the
scheme which they said was inefficient, wasteful and resulted in
rostering that left them with scraps while their overseas
counterparts cherry-picked the juicier routes.
Flight operations was in charge, came the reply, when Mr Lee asked
who was behind it all if they were right about the matter.
'If all this is true, then the flight operations must be blind or
stupid! ... I want an explanation from them because I cannot
believe this,' he said.
'You give me a paper, I will look at it.'
He promised the human resources of the airline would be revamped
and urged the pilots to give new chief executive officer Chew Choon
Seng a chance.
As trust was rebuilt, there should be more information sharing so
both sides could work together.
They told him 38 pilots had left in recent months. Where were they
going, he wanted to know.
There will be changes, he said.
'I am assuring you that the Government will make sure that SIA acts
in good faith,' he said.
Mr Lee went on to answer one of the main questions on the minds of
Singaporeans: Why did the Government need to intervene in an
internal company matter? 'We are the majority owners and we will
ensure that they act in the interest of the country, and the
interest of the country requires cooperation, trust and confidence
from the unions.'
Why did it have to be the Senior Minister?
As he explained it, he had dealt with the airline from the
beginning, it was fair he saw to it that the restive relationship
between the pilots in the early years still continuing today,
end.
But he was also realistic enough to concede this much: The residual
feelings of suspicion would still be there.
Capt Mok too made this plain enough when he told the media later
Alpa-S was not ready to embrace NTUC.
But yes, he and the others pledged to work on a clean slate, work
in partnership with management and give things a go. They would use
the negotiations for the new collective agreement as a time for
trust-building.
By the end of it, it felt as if the fog of suspicion that had
settled between Government and Alpa-S these past months had a good
chance of lifting.
As the press walked in at the tail end of the meeting and posed
questions, Captain Mok insisted on looking forward, vowing to make
a clean start.
Details of difficulties with management? No, he wasn't keen on
hitting the headlines with that.
Details of demands? No, not keen either.
Management should thank him for closing the books thus.
The meeting ended with handshakes all around, even with the
solemn-looking Capt Goh.
If there was any sense of deja vu in the room, Captain Freddie Koh
must have felt it most.
He was among a posse of union pilots Mr Lee summoned to the Istana
in 1980 for daring to fan a go-slow action to vent their
disgruntlement over pay and work conditions.
He told them then in unvarnished language: 'I do not want to do you
in but I will not let anyone do Singapore in.'
When trouble with Alpa-S began, Mr Lee said he wanted to clean up
on the restiveness that was resurfacing. 'This is a job that has to
be finished and I'll finish it.'
Thursday afternoon moved towards that conclusion.
Looking back, throughout it all, the Senior Minister in effect
employed the familiar strategy of good cop, bad cop. Except that he
played both roles.
Now that he and the Government have said their piece and the pilots
have made peace, SIA needs to break its deafening silence.
Soon.
