Here is a laundry list of 12 things Chan Chun Sing, and the NTUC, is working on for the coming four years

We're keen to hear what they will do for freelancers and contract staff, especially.

Jeanette Tan| October 29, 12:03 PM

As part of the ongoing Very Important Week for the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC), labour chief Chan Chun Sing, a.k.a. its secretary-general, sat down with the press on Wednesday evening to flesh out a work plan he unveiled on Tuesday, which included some pandering to the needs of millennials.

This, he says, is the culmination not just of the past two days of discussion with hundreds of union leaders, but a cumulative six-month process where he met with groups of union members that grew progressively larger as the ideas and planning snowballed.

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discussions took place at the NTUC National Delegates' Conference with 800 union leaders discussing how to...

Posted by Chan Chun Sing on Wednesday, 28 October 2015

So now, here's what all that discussion has come to:

1. To implement a progressive wage model and skills ladder across all industries

"These two must come together. And we are not talking just about the low-wage sectors, in fact this concept must spread to cover every sector. For example even the engineers who partner us, they will also work out the progressive skills ladder for their respective engineering sub-sectors. And from there we can talk about how we can help our workers to progress up the skills ladder so they have both career progression, skills progression at the same time. So that's the best way to take care of our workers."

2. Maintain Singapore's strong tripartite model

"Tripartism is the centre of how we take care of our workers, about having a good environment to attract investments, create good jobs as a basis for our success and a basis of how we take care of our workers. We've made an announcement of how we are strengthening the links and exchanges between the labour movement, SNEF and also the government sector. We are using SkillsFuture, we are using the initiative and we are using the sectoral manpower planning initiative to groom the next generation of leaders together with the cross-posting and cross-attachment of promising young leaders from all three partners."

3. Develop and support social enterprise further

"There are some new priorities for social enterprises... there are a few areas, particularly in the area of eldercare, healthcare, healthcare cost management, childcare and student care services, and food.

So you will see NTUC Health, NTUC Unity, NTUC My First Campus, NTUC Foodfare stepping up their work, at the same time you will also see us delivering on what we call an integrated package to meet the evolving needs of Singaporeans.

So even 'conventional' social enterprises, if I may use the word 'conventional' like NTUC Fairprice, they will also have to evolve the range of products that they sell; similarly they also have to involve their models of delivery of such services, so we will unveil more details in the coming months."

4. Build a positive and safe environment for workers

Photo courtesy of NTUC Photo courtesy of NTUC

"The positive environment refers to our... efforts to help the low-wage workers, women, elderly workers and the migrant workers.

The safe environment... this is an issue that is very close to our hearts, especially in the recent months where we have had a few industrial accidents — each one has been one too many — and we want to see how we can work with the companies and MOM to reduce these to a minimum, if not to eliminate this where possible."

5, 6. Continue their work in dispute resolution and national advocacy

"These are conventional issues that we will continue to pay attention to."

7. Provide greater protection for freelance and contract workers

"Going forward, protection of freelancers, contract workers and so forth will go beyond collective agreement and collective bargaining. So there will be new forms, new mechanisms that we will have. We will work with MOM to better-protect our workers. These include the kind of legislations we might have, these include the kind of dispute resolution mechanisms, like the employment claims tribunal, so these are the things we will be working on."

8. Strengthen the Singapore core

"... not just in terms of numbers but in terms of the skill sets, and to identify the part of the chain that best allows Singaporeans to retain and extract value from the entire chain, so we can value-add to the growth and development of Singaporeans. So the Singaporean core is not a number per se, it's about the quality of jobs."

9. Increase the strength of NTUC's network and membership

"... not just to membership in numbers, it also includes our outreach to PMEs, our U-associates, it also includes our outreach to SMEs through our SME programme and our various communities... and so forth."

Photo courtesy of NTUC Photo courtesy of NTUC

10. Develop young leaders and focus on ensuring they will be good stewards of the labour movement

"In the new environment... we will come up with a leadership programme that allows us to grow our leaders even if they change jobs or change industries, and we're going to have quite a bit of emphasis on leadership and stewardship — not just in terms of financial management, stewardship also refers to the governance; it also refers to the development of the next-generation leaders, because all union leaders are stewards of their unions and the causes that their unions represent."

11. Enhance the communications and engagement of NTUC's members

"There is a need for us to intensify our communications and engagement and build it... especially now that we have almost a million members of very diverse backgrounds. So of course it won't be a one-size-fits-all communication and engagement method, you'll see a diversity of methods to reach out to differnet groups, different segments and also the non-engaged base."

12. Equip all union members with "future-ready" skills

"We will work closely with MOM and also MOE on the SkillsFuture initiative. This is to make sure our members have future-ready skills, they are employable, they are competitive not just from within but also (beyond Singapore)."

 

And who will bring these lofty ideas into fruition? The 21-man team of leaders in NTUC's central committee, who will be elected on Thursday. These will be assigned roles both overseeing their respective industries as well as which cut across the entire organisation for the betterment of all.

 

Top photo by Jeanette Tan.

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