What a difference 48 hours make in
news reporting, when looking at the following news report extracted
below from this Sunday Times, the slant of language and tone is
completely different from the preceding article that led this
thread.
In this Sunday's edition, the report seems to put the ALPA-S SIA
Pilot Association in a bad spot, and meekly accepted their mistaken
position of confronting SIA Management.
The tough, bullying language of SM LKY was kept in awe, and
glorified as his playing the role of 'good cop and bad cop' - when
it basically boils down to nothing by gangsterism across the
negotiating table, with him thinking that he has all the Ace Cards;
until the rude surprise of the silly mistakes of SIA
Management.
Compared with the report of the clear defense put up by Capt Goh,
who was individually targetted by SM LKY, nothing was mentioned in
the same breadth as was reported and posted in the other thread -
'SIA Girl Letter' by Void Deck, dated 29 February
2004.
http://www.sgforums.com/?action=thread_display&thread_id=71129
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.