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SINGAPORE: Sixty individuals and companies received this year's May Day awards on Wednesday evening.
Topping the list are Temasek Holdings' outgoing CEO Ho Ching and Wing Tai's senior advisor James Lee, while executive secretary of the Singapore Bank Employees Union, Michael Chang, received the Comrade of Labour (Star) Award.
When Temasek Holdings decided to sell its power generation companies two years ago, Ms Ho anticipated the anxieties of its union leaders.
She said: "One of things I decided was that I had to introduce my team to one particular union leader, so that they can feel the spirit and they can feel what it means at the ground level.
"This particular union leader, Nithi, was at the final stages of kidney cancer, so I brought my chaps to visit him at his home, to speak to him and I think at the end of it, they understood what it meant because they not only worked hard to make sure that we understand the union's concerns and work with management and the board to address those concerns, but more importantly, the team made the effort to ensure that potential new owners will also meet with the unions.
"In that way, it was not just the trust between ourselves and the unions and the management, but also to try and transfer this trust with the new owners because this is over the long term and we wanted to make sure that whoever the new owners are, understood that in the context of Singapore, we do pay a lot of attention to maintaining this trust and mutual confidence."
And trust is key to successful management-union relations.
Ms Ho said: "Really, it is finding the common grounds to pull people together and work for the long term and try to overcome short-term difficulties. Even in this crisis, it is a question of time before it is over.
"It's about pulling people to survive, to overcome short-term difficulties and to maintain that trust and mutual confidence because without that, we will be pulling in different directions and once that trust is broken, it is very hard to repair.
"So I think particularly during this crisis, it is very, very critical that we work hard maintaining that dialogue and communication, and reinforce the fact that we are all together for the long term."
Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, which received the Plaque of Commendation (Gold), has also been successful at cultivating healthy industrial relations with its union, Chemical Industries Employees Union (CIEU).
The company plans to cross-train employees to make them more flexible in a fast-changing business environment.
Christopher Dobson, MD of GlaxoSmithKline, said: "The benefit that we have is, we can talk to the CIEU about the business, about the problems we have and about the challenges.
"As a consequence of tripartism, we can work together. We work together to grow the cake, we don't spend time fighting over the cake - we get a lot from this working relationship."
Treating staff with sincerity is another important factor for a company's success.
Wing Tai's Mr Lee said: "You don't wait till the crisis comes, then you send your staff for training. You get yourself all prepared for that. Training to us is very important.
"When we are facing a crisis, I always get hold of my general managers to discuss with their own team, and if I want to save some costs, they will come and suggest to me how they're going to save costs."
Companies that received the May Day awards are also active with efforts to re-employ older workers.
- CNA/so
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