Speaking at the National Delegates’ Conference of the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) on Nov 22, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong dismissed any idea that unions should play a smaller role in Singapore today. He underlined instead why the NTUC and the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) must double down on their symbiotic relationship. The relationship underpins the reality of tripartism, that is, of the Government playing an impartial and balancing role in capital-labour relations. Tripartism owes its origins to two seminal events: the passage of the Industrial Relations (Amendment) Act in 1968 and the organisation of the Modernisation Seminar by the NTUC in 1969. The beauty of tripartism at its inception, and thence into its continuation, lay in that the Government could not afford to be pro-labour at the expense of business because the investments necessary for creating jobs would have dried up then. Equally, however, the Government could not afford to be pro-business at the expense of the labour that comprised the bulk of average Singaporeans.

The global economic landscape has changed vastly since the tripartite principle was established early into Singapore’s independence, but the fundamental need for tripartism remains intact. Technological and other disruptions are affecting the livelihoods of workers across the globe, including Singapore. In these troubling times, a contracting role for unions would help only to unleash forces that fan defensive populism and divisive identity politics. Singapore cannot afford to go that way. Hence, the need for tripartism to continue to act as a trusted compass in industrial relations. A key mechanism of the tripartite framework is the National Wages Council, which takes a national view of the economy to form a consensual basis for wage bargaining at the company level.