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SINGAPORE: Singapore's labour movement on Wednesday spelt out its strategy to work with the government and employers to enhance productivity levels in Singapore.
And that includes helping companies enhance levels of innovation and include all workers in the productivity journey.
NTUC Secretary General Lim Swee Say also stated the movement's position on foreign workers on the second day of the Budget debate in Parliament.
"Job is the best welfare, full employment is the best protection for workers and productivity gain is the best driver for wage increase in the future," he said.
Joining the debate, the labour movement chief spelt out some of the key priorities for the NTUC on how it can work together with both employers and the government to achieve the long term productivity growth objectives.
He said the first item on the agenda is to strive for total productivity.
"Not by loading more stress on the workers because if you keep doing that, one day the worker themselves may become the bottleneck but by helping the workers to break the bottleneck at the workplace,” Mr Lim said.
The next step is to help companies further innovate and also involve all workers; and finally, encouraging companies to put into practice the principle of gain sharing when there are savings as a result of productivity programmes.
"If we are not able to up the productivity of the entire workforce of both local and foreign workers, the Singapore economy (and) the growth will be slow," he explained.
"So one day we may wake up and see Singapore having a slow GDP growth at the same time low productivity gain. And when that happens we think that will be a deadly combination for a small economy like Singapore. We must not allow that to happen.
"If we can rally all our workers, rally the entire 3.3 million workers in Singapore together, for every one per cent improvement in productivity, we will be able to produce equivalent to 30,000 workers. That is the power of productivity gain and teamwork."
The NTUC Chief also disagreed with the opposition MP Low Thia Khiang's observation that the labour movement had not done anything for low wage workers.
He reminded MPs that many programmes to help them upskill had been introduced over the past few years.
"Workfare Income Supplement - we recognise that it will help to supplement the wages of low wage workers, but we also recognise that that the best way to help low wage workers is to upgrade their skills and enhance their jobs," Mr Lim said.
"Because of this strategy we succeeded in preventing many low wage workers and rank and file workers from becoming 'no wage workers'."
The labour movement also does not subscribe to a no foreign worker policy, with Mr Lim stressing that if this policy was implemented, Singapore's workforce would actually shrink by 20 per cent in ten years' time.
- CNA/yb
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