S Ramesh | 8 Dec, 2011 6:00 AM
SINGAPORE - Creating better jobs and sustaining broad-based real wage increases for all workers - this will be the mission of the labour movement from now until 2015.
The labour movement's masterplan, LM 2015, was unveiled on Tuesday at the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) National Delegates Conference.
In his report, NTUC secretary-general Lim Swee Say noted how Singapore's unemployment rates came down last year, even though the rates "stayed high" in the United States, the European Union and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.
There has also been improvement in the real wage of workers here in the past decade, although the increase was not as high as in the '90s, he added.
Said Mr Lim, who is also a Minister in the Prime Minister's Office: "To have broad-based real wage increase, we need to have broad-based growth. I agree that we should never go for growth at all costs but we should also never forget the high costs of slow or no growth.
"We can never assume that we will always have enough jobs and real wage increase, as many Americans have found out the hard way and are still suffering from it."
Mr Lim noted that, at a time when unionisation is seen as a "sunset movement in many countries", union membership here has gone up by more than 30 per cent between 2007 and this year.
The labour movement currently has about 670,000 members. The target, Mr Lim said, is to reach one million members by 2015.
Mr Lim said: "Union leaders elsewhere often feel helpless when their workers are trapped in a hopeless situation. Not us here in Singapore. In good times or bad, we are always able to be helpful to our workers and our workers hopeful for a better future." S Ramesh
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