SINGAPORE: Singapore's labour movement NTUC said it wants to
examine how to enable tripartism to go beyond the national level --
a topic that unionists will discuss during their Ordinary Delegates
Conference beginning on Tuesday.
Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Tharman
Shanmugaratnam will deliver the keynote address at the opening of
the Ordinary Delegates Conference. Unionists will also hear from
their Secretary-General, Lim Swee Say, who will give his report at
the meeting.
"A Stronger Labour Movement for a Better Singapore" -- that is the
theme of the conference taking place amidst a more volatile global
environment.
NTUC said one element that has brought Singapore many investments,
jobs and industrial peace is tripartism.
NTUC's deputy secretary-general, Heng Chee How, said: "If we were
to look at our tripartism as it is practiced, you have many
interactions and problem-solving platforms at the national
level.
"So at the national leaders level, that is very closely knit and
mutual understanding (has been) forged through working together
over many years and at the same time, you also have the NWC
(National Wages Council).
"What we are actually seeing is that as the economy becomes more
diverse and different industries meet different challenges,
sectoral characteristics are not quite always the same as the
overall picture at the macro national level. So we think there is a
place for a lot more sectoral tripartism to take place.
"If you take the cleaning industry as an example, one of the
challenges faced by workers in the industry would be the wages, and
you want that to go up sustainably both for the workers and the
companies. So you need many types of reforms."
Another challenge for the labour movement is to help low wage
workers enjoy sustainable wage improvements.
NTUC vice president K Karthikeyan said: "We came out with the model
called the Progressive Wage Model -- that model will help us with
career progression.
"At the same time, there will be a productivity improvement which
actually helps the company and of course, it motivates the worker
to move to the higher platform -- you do more work and be more
productive, you get a higher salary."
Mr Heng added: "This Progressive Wage Model, sometimes when people
hear about it they think it's just about wages. There are four
pillars. In this model, it is an improvement in skills, an
improvement in productivity, improvement in career and together
with that, wages.
"We have been promoting this through our different clusters and
industries over the past year and a half and we have been seeing
progress."
The Ordinary Delegates Conference takes place once every four
years. At this conference, there will be no elections to the NTUC
Central Committee.
- CNA/ac
