Serving with a heart is key to building a stronger labour movement

Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam

NTUC Secretary General Lim Swee Say

Immediate Past Secretary General Lim Boon Heng

OTC Institute Governors

NTUC Central Committee Members

Graduands

Ladies and Gentlemen

1. A very good morning to all of you and I am very happy to join you this morning for the graduation ceremony.

2. The Ong Teng Cheong Labour Leadership Institute, or OTCi, has come a long way since 1992. In the inaugural batch, there were just 33 unionists who received their Diploma in Industrial Relations. Today, we have more than 150 graduating with a wide range of diplomas, including the Advanced Certificate in Industrial Relations and the OTC Institute-UniSIM Diploma in Employment Relations. So let me start by extending my warmest congratulations to all our graduands today. Well done!

3. I also want to recognise all the people who have supported our graduands: employers, spouses, family members – I think there are children as well because I hear them just now. It’s not easy to study and work at the same time – we all know that. So thank you for being there for our graduands and enabling them to achieve this important milestone. So, I think I should invite the graduands to give a big hand of applause to all the supporters who are here too.

4. Much of what we have here today builds on what the late Mr Ong Teng Cheong had stood for – the well-being of workers and the interests of workers. He worked closely with them, and he earned the trust of many by listening with a heart, and caring for them. And these qualities helped him to advance the labour movement, and to make the labour movement an integral part of our workforce and our country’s social fabric.

5. So I hope all the graduands here today will carry on this rich legacy left by Mr Ong and take up the responsibility of looking after the welfare and well-being of your fellow workers.
   

Diverse backgrounds but with one vision to serve

6. All of you have different experiences and you come from different organisations – we have elected unionists, Industrial Relations Officers with the NTUC, we have HR practitioners from both the public and private sectors who are graduating today. While you come from diverse backgrounds, I believe all of you have something in common – and that’s the spirit of service to make life better for your fellow workers.

7. How we serve can take many forms. It may mean going the extra mile to help a fellow colleague. It may involve sacrifices including forgoing time with family and friends to represent the interests of your fellow workers or union members. But what’s important is our mindset and attitude. We serve not because we have to. We serve because we want to. It must come from the heart. When we choose to serve, we are connected to a higher calling. We discover more about ourselves, and about the meaning of community. And this gets to the core of what it means to be a Singaporean. Because it is about being our brother’s keeper, or our sister’s keeper, and accepting the responsibility to look out for one another.

8. And I see this spirit of service in all our union leaders. I’ve had the privilege of working with our brothers and sisters from UPAGE – initially as the Chief Executive of EMA some time ago, and now as Advisor to the Union. So I was regulating the sector, perhaps I did too much as a regulator, and then they asked me to advise the union now. In the power sector, as all of you know, we’ve gone through several significant changes like the corporatisation from PUB, and then subsequent divestment to private hands. And we’ve been fortunate to have effective union leaders in UPAGE like the late brother Nithiah Nanden and now they’ve continue to have that strong leadership in UPAGE and I have had the personal experience of working with many of them and I could see how they have gone the extra mile to represent the interests of workers with management, and also very often to the regulator, to appeal to help safeguard the interests of workers to make sure that their fellow workers are looked after as we go through many of these significant transitions in the power sector.

9. You saw just now that NTUC has recently launched the book “A Heart to Serve”, which puts together many of the stories of our union leaders. In fact I was glad to see sister Suseela mentioned just now – she’s also a leader from UPAGE – and there are many union leaders in that book which contains many inspiring stories such as how union leaders helped to improve working conditions, and helped to support the needs of vulnerable workers and their families. So I hope this book and all the stories there will motivate and inspire our graduands today to continue in this tradition of service.

10. One of them is Mr Simon Yam, who is the General Secretary of the Singapore Broadcasting Employees’ Union. Simon wants to use the knowledge he has gained to represent his team members more effectively, especially to management. He has worked with his management to come out with amicable solutions to tackle work arrangements. And he has also helped to organise joint union management workshops, like “Understanding the Employment Act” through OTC Institute, so that both management and union can achieve a common understanding on workplace issues, resulting in better workplace relations.

11. Another graduand is Mr Paul Anpalagan, who is General Treasurer of the United Workers of Petroleum Industries, and from his time spent here in the course, he has deepened his understanding of the rationale behind labour policies.  In turn, he now hopes to reach out to his colleagues, and help them better understand these policies – some of which may seem hard-headed but are in fact beneficial for workers in the longer term.

Working hand-in-hand with the Government

12. Leaders like Simon and Paul, and all of you here today, will be critical in helping the workforce adapt to the changing demands of the economy. We know that the world is changing very quickly, with globalisation and technological advances creating new pressures in the workplace.  In the past, we had competition from low-wage and low-skilled workers. Now, there is competition from low-wage but high-skilled workers.

13. What this means is that jobs of the future will involve not just basic competencies but it involves doing and thinking, and constant learning, and we must do more, much more, to develop a culture of skills mastery in Singapore. We want to become a place where every worker is able to discover and achieve his full potential; where every worker can take pride in skills and skills mastery, and is valued for his contributions.

14. And to move in this direction, the Government has set up the SkillsFuture Council, which is chaired by our DPM here, and PM Lee has also announced the setting up of a SkillsFuture Jubilee Fund. It is a long-term journey – we won’t get there overnight and it cannot be done by the Government alone. It will require strong tripartite partnership – with the government, employees and unions working together to develop a broad-based culture of skills development and training across all industries.

15. And so I’m glad that the OTCi is also doing its part in this new environment to equip union leaders with the necessary skills. For example, when NTUC launched the Progressive Wage Model, OTCi equipped union leaders with the know-how to drive progressive wages in their organisations together with their management. And OTCi also runs workshops where union leaders keep up to date with impending changes in the industrial relations act, so they can understand better and represent the needs of Professionals, Managers and Executives.

Conclusion

16. So, OTCi is doing its part and all of our graduands here today are also able to do your part because you are role models in our SkillsFuture journey. All of you epitomise this spirit of lifelong learning. All of you had to make personal sacrifices, to juggle your work and family commitments while pursuing your studies at the same time. I’m sure it has not been an easy journey but you have shown tremendous grit and determination to learn and to upgrade yourselves. I hope you remember that learning does not stop with your diploma today. It must be a lifelong process and I hope that you will keep alive this spirit of lifelong learning, and inspire many others in your workplace to join you in this journey of skills development and mastery.

17. On this note, let me congratulate once again all our graduands on your achievements, and I wish you every success in your future endeavours.