DPM Heng Swee Keat at the Singapore Manual and Mercantile Workers Union 65th Anniversary Dinner

Sister K Thanaletchimi, President of the NTUC
Brother Ng Chee Meng, Secretary-General of the NTUC
Brother Sim Teck Chua, President of the Singapore Manual and Mercantile Workers’ Union or SMMWU,
Brother Andy Lim, Secretary-General of the SMMWU,
Brother Chandra Mohan Velu, Chairman, Annual Dinner Organising Committee of the SMMWU,
Sisters and Brothers, my fellow Singaporeans,

A very good evening! Thank you for inviting me to join all of you, Sisters and Brothers from the SMMWU, to celebrate your 65th anniversary.

The SMMWU was formed in January 1959 – so SMMWU qualifies for the Merdeka Generation!

Back then, you started with seven industrial and clerical workers.

Today, you are the largest union affiliated with the NTUC, with more than 100,000 members across 470 branches.

Workers in the SMMWU form the foundation of the enterprises you work in.

By providing commercial, clerical and other service support, you enable your companies to operate smoothly.

In particular, during the COVID pandemic, your courage and resilience in adapting to changing and difficult conditions allowed many core functions to continue.

Many of you also work in the hospitality and services sectors and are the face of Singapore to our friends and guests from around the world!

So Sisters and Brothers, let me first congratulate the SMMWU on reaching this remarkable milestone of 65 years. Well done!

Being 65 means that the SMMWU is older than independent Singapore. Through these 65 years, you have been an active participant at the different stages of our nation’s development.

I have been involved in developing Singapore’s economy for almost 30 years now.

If you ask me for the most important reason behind our progress, it is this: the trust and cooperation between Government, businesses and workers.

I just returned from a trip to the US and South Korea. In both places, social tensions are high.

In South Korea, there are protests almost every day on various issues, and frequent strikes by different groups, including doctors.

But confrontation does not achieve good outcomes and much energy is wasted.

If these energies are instead used to find solutions that tackle the fundamental issues, they would have achieved good outcomes for everyone.

Here in Singapore, we have worked hard to foster trust and communication between Government, employers and workers.

This allows us to engage one another in good faith, especially in times of difficulty and crisis.

The generations of union leaders here tonight have been doing excellent, constructive work in strengthening trust, and building deep skills among our workers.

I commend each and every one of you for your efforts. Thank You very much!

Sisters and Brothers, we have now achieved this trust and goodwill and built up our unique model of tripartism which is so valuable.

It has taken  decades of hard work to achieve this. So it is important for us to look back, to draw lessons from our journey.

In the SMMWU’s early years in the 1960s, Singapore was experiencing a period of great change and uncertainty.

Those of us who grew up in that period would remember that Mr Lee Kuan Yew and his team were locked in an existential fight with the communists.

The communists used the unions to  stoke agitation against the Government and fomented labour unrest.

In his memoirs, Mr Lee recalled that we had a record 153 strikes in 14 months between July 1961 and September 1962 – almost three strikes a week!

This disrupted our workers’ livelihoods, and undermined Singapore’s efforts to develop the economy and to create jobs for our people.

Mr Lee and his colleagues worked hard to free the unions from communist control and build a more collaborative relationship between our unions and the Government.

The SMMWU was an important partner in this effort. You mobilised union and worker support away from the communists and towards the NTUC and the People’s Action Party (PAP).

This weekend, the PAP will mark the 70th anniversary of our founding.

For the past seven decades, the PAP has been steadfast in working with our unions and workers to overcome challenges and seize new opportunities.

We are committed to continue doing so, now and into the future.

This tripartism that the PAP Government has built, together with our businesses and unions, has delivered good results for all Singaporeans.

Today, our economy is much stronger than 60 years ago.

Earlier this year, we were ranked the world’s most competitive economy by the Swiss-based International Institute for Management Development, or IMD.

Since we embarked on our Industry Transformation efforts, we achieved real value-added growth per annum of 2.8% per annum between 2016 and 2023.

This is higher than most economies with a similar population and level of development.

Importantly, tripartism has enabled us to ensure that the fruits of growth are widely shared, and that our prosperity is inclusive.

Through tripartite efforts, we have translated our growth and development into better lives and livelihoods for our workers, raising wages and improving standards of living.

For example, through the Progressive Wage Model, we have worked together to increase workers’ wages through upgrading skills and improving productivity.

Over the last decade, real wages of lower-wage workers at the 20th percentile rose by 30% - faster than that of the median worker.

This means that as costs of living rose, the incomes of our lower-wage workers rose even more.

We are continuing to uplift our workers in lower-wage roles. For instance, under the Occupational Progressive Wages for Administrators, administrative executives will receive a gross monthly wage of at least $2,580 by 2025 – a 30% increase from the initial wage requirement in 2023.

Tripartism has also helped our economy weather many storms, including recession in the 1980s, the Asian Financial Crisis in the 1990s, and the Global Financial Crisis in the late 2000s.

More recently, during COVID, the Government introduced the Jobs Support Scheme, drawing on our past reserves to help preserve workers’ livelihoods.

As then-Minister for Finance, I exhorted companies not to retrench our workers or put them on prolonged no-pay leave.

Even before COVID, we worked with NTUC and companies to train workers and prepare them for job transformation.

In 2019, I announced that unionised companies that committed to training and reskilling, and raising the salaries of lower-wage workers could tap on an extra 10% in funding support provided by NTUC, through the Enterprise Development Grant.

During the pandemic, we worked even harder with NTUC and our unions, including the SMMWU, to implement the SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package to provide upskilling and employment facilitation support to Singaporeans whose jobs were affected by the pandemic.

Today, Singapore along with the rest of the world is living through yet another wave of great change and disruption.

The global environment is looking more uncertain especially for small, open economies like us.

US-China competition, wars in Europe and the Middle East, and efforts in near-shoring and friend-shoring are affecting trade and investment flows globally.

These are already affecting businesses and workers here. We must be prepared for more uncertainty in the years ahead.

In addition, rapid advances in technology such as robotics and AI are disrupting industries, value chains and entire economies.

For example, we see many more businesses today using robots to automate tasks.

In hotels, we see robots delivering room service and performing cleaning duties.

In shopping malls and other public places, robots are deployed for additional security and cleaning.

In warehouses, robots are used to sort and manage stockpiles and inventories.

Increasingly, AI algorithms are also being used to perform various enterprise functions such as bookkeeping, data entry and records and supplies management.

These changes are also unfolding against the backdrop of ageing populations, and shrinking workforces, in many economies around the world.

Sisters and Brothers, our starting point in tackling these changes, and more that will come our way, must be to learn how to ride these changes.

We have been doing restructuring and transforming all along for close to six decades.

Workforce transformation, in particular, has always been a key pillar of our efforts.

In the course of my work, I meet many counterparts from around the world, in places like Europe and South Korea, who tell me that their unions resist and even block change.

Ultimately, this benefits nobody. The global economy will continue to change, and those who stay still will be left behind.

In Singapore, we are fortunate to have progressive-minded unions, like the SMMWU and others, who act as catalysts for change.

Sisters and Brothers, we must continue to embrace change and transformation and see these new technologies not as an enemy, but  as tools to help us become more productive. And this means having the right mindset.

Tripartism can also enable us to transform our economy in ways that benefit our workers.

So, make the most of new growth opportunities and keep Singapore globally competitive and relevant. This will  allow us to build good jobs and meaningful careers for our workers.

And to do this well, we must continue to preserve the trust and collaboration between Government, employers and workers. By working together, we can meet these new challenges and opportunities head-on.

I am heartened by the strong support from our unions for the latest chapter in our economic transformation that started 8 years ago, even before the pandemic, with the Committee on the Future Economy and Future Economy Council which I chaired.

The Future Economy Council, which included Brother Chee Meng, designed and implemented the 23 Industry Transformation Maps or ITMs.

These have helped to better position our economy and workers to cope with structural changes. We are seeing good results.

Along with the ITMs, NTUC introduced the Company Training Committee or CTC initiative.

This has helped foster a culture of lifelong learning among employees.

With automation and digital transformation reshaping all sectors, these CTCs have reskilled and upskilled workers to keep up with evolving labour market demands and technological changes.

When I tell leaders from other countries that Brother Chee Meng and our unions have set up CTCs, to work with companies to reskill workers, they are often stunned.

They admire Singapore for having such good leaders and workers who not only understand the need to change but are taking proactive steps to change.

The Government has set aside $100 million to support NTUC in your efforts to scale up enterprise and workforce transformation through CTCs. Thiswill benefit both employers and workers, and bring better career prospects and productivity for our workers.

I am glad that the SMMWU has formed more than 190 CTCs with companies till date. Well done!

I encourage you to reach out to even more companies to partner you.

NTUC has also worked with companies to develop Operation and Technology Roadmaps.

Through these, NTUC, unions and companies co-create strategies to transform businesses by capitalising on drivers like technology and building manpower capabilities.

In tandem, unions including the SMMWU are tapping on NTUC schemes like the Union Training Assistance Programme to empower members to upskill and reskill.

I commend the NTUC leadership for spearheading these efforts, and continually seeking to strengthen them.

For example, to further deepen the impact of the CTCs, I understand that NTUC is exploring how to cluster related industries together as part of your retraining programmes. Within sectors, big enterprises can also serve as “Queen Bees” to help SMEs accelerate their efforts.

Even as the Government and unions step up support for reskilling and upskilling, companies and individual workers can also take the initiative to upgrade themselves.

So I encourage everyone to make full use of your SkillsFuture credits, and SkillsFuture Enterprise Credits, to accelerate your transformation and become more productive.

I hear that SMMWU is working closely with companies to implement the new Tripartite Guidelines on Flexible Work Arrangement Requests that will come into effect on 1 December.

So you are working with companies to establish structured processes for handling Flexible Work Arrangement requests, and advising companies on how such to assess these requests.

I am also very happy that the SMMWU is reaching out to more professionals, managers and executives or PMEs through seminars, workshops and events targeting PME-specific concerns.

Now all of these collaborative efforts are part of Singapore’s broader goal of creating more flexible and inclusive workplaces.

By balancing diverse employee’s needs with companies’ objectives, companies can attract and retain strong talent and make the best use of their people.

Just as NTUC and our unions support our workers to  strengthen their career health, it is also important that all of you maintain and enhance your personal and family health.

After all, our health and well-being is fundamental to how productive we are at the workplace, and how much we can contribute to our companies and organisations. I had a stroke eight and a half years ago. I am very grateful to have fully recovered and continued working. So, please take good care of your health, and never take good health for granted even as you work hard.

I am also very happy that the SMMWU continues to support members’ children in their education through bursaries and scholarships.

The NTUC U-Care Fund, started in 2009, also continues to support the well-being of members and their families.

As we live longer, our career cycles will also extend. As you know, we are raising the retirement and reemployment ages to 64 and 69 respectively, from July 2026.

So it is important that we stay healthy, keep our minds alert, learn new skills and reach our fullest potential.

I encourage all of you, Sisters and Brothers, to sign up for HealthierSG and make full use of its programmes and services, if you have not already done so.

Remember to keep up your active lifestyles and healthy diets so that we can lead long and meaningful lives.

Sisters and Brothers, I know I stand between you and dinner so let me conclude.

The SMMWU and other unions, alongside NTUC, has played a critical role to ensure the success of Singapore’s model of tripartism for close to six decades.

This has not only contributed to the prosperity and well-being of current generations in Singapore.

It has also paved the way for a better and brighter future for our children.

Working together in trust and collaboration among Government, employers and unions, we have faced moments of great change and uncertainty before and always emerged stronger.

I am confident that we can and will do so again, and do even better in the coming years.

Having worked closely with on our tripartite relations in my many different Ministerial roles, I am personally very honoured and touched to have been conferred the Medal of Honour by NTUC in 2021. I will continue to do my best to support the NTUC leadership, our unions and our workers.

Congratulations once again to the SMMWU on your 65th anniversary, and I wish you the best in galvanising your members along on our continuing journey of transformation and upskilling.

Sisters and Brothers, stay strong, stay healthy, stay happy, and enjoy your dinner!