In an article attacking NTUC, activist Kirsten Han quoted Garry Rodan, director of the Asia Research Center at Australia’s Murdoch University, as saying that the Singapore worker has been left with no adequate representation because NTUC has failed to play an independent role in defining and representing workers' rights.
Such deliberate ignorance.
To make up for the lack of arguments, she included the 'million-dollar salaries' of ministers.
But first, Garry Rodan. He is someone whose vocabulary to describe the PAP Government includes words like 'regimes' and 'authoritarian rule'. Enough said. You know where he comes from.
In October 2015, the director-general of ILO (International Labour Organisation) Mr Guy Ryder strongly endorsed the Singapore model of tripartism. He commented that 'Singapore has become a model to emulate.'
Industrial relations expert Sarosh Kuruvilla of Cornell University called Singapore "a classic example of a place where tripartism is deeply institutionalised". Singapore, along with Slovenia, has ranked highest in the strength of representation.
"I haven't seen the kind of commitment from top leadership (they have in Singapore) towards the concept in any other country," Prof Kuruvilla said.
NTUC today has moved beyond representing the rights and welfare of the rank-and-file workers to embrace more workers, representing the PMEs as well and helping even workers who are not union members.
It has moved beyond merely representing workers' rights to helping workers to upgrade and build their skills so that they can continue to enjoy good salaries.
"It is not about asking people to give us extra salaries and extra benefits just because we ask," said Mr Chan Chun Sing, who is secretary-general of the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC).
"It has to do with a lot of background work behind the scenes in trying to lift the productivity of our workers so that they can enjoy a good salary to provide for their families."
Such an idea is foreign to Kirsten Han. Her idea of an effective union is one that leads their workers in strikes.
Our unions work with post-secondary education institutes, institutes of higher learning and private service providers to increase the number of up-to-date training modules for workers.
At the same time, the unions also mobilise working people to make use of the available resources, such as the $1 billion worth of SkillsFuture Credit, to upgrade their skills and help themselves.
That's how workers' welfare and livelihood are being taken care of.
In transforming the Singapore economy into an innovative one, it is essential that the Government, the employers and the workers are all on board.
Good policies work only if they are effective. Companies cannot transform themselves without transforming their workers. The stronger the link between Government, unions and employers, the better.
Tripartism here is an asset and a strength, the envy of countries that have seen their workers having to take to the streets in, sometimes violent, protests to make themselves heard.
Tripartism here has resulted in mutual trust between employers and unions. Such a trust is good for workers.
At the May Day rally in 1960, then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew declared that the government was openly on the side of the worker.
"To be a good and effective union leader is no longer a matter of simply getting the workers to unite and fight the employer. And if the employer refuses to settle, then to squat and suffer collectively at the factory gate and hope to make the employer's business also suffer until he settles or closes down. For with the government on the workers' side this is not necessary."
"The strength of the workers is directly related to the supremacy of the Government," Mr Lee Kuan Yew said.
A close link between NTUC and the Government is a win for the workers.
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