WHAT do our unions do? The answer seems pretty obvious. Ask any of our union leaders from the 63 affiliated unions, and they will tell you that most of their time is spent dealing with bread and butter issues.

Every year, they negotiate wage increases and bonuses and, once in three years, they negotiate collective agreements to ensure that their members receive fair wages, and terms and conditions of employment. Or their resources may be drawn upon to deal with retrenchments. Negotiating fair retrenchment benefits, and ensuring that workers who are displaced are assisted with job placement or retraining is another important aspect of their work. Grievances occupy most of their remaining time.

Although Singapore enjoys good industrial relations, it is quite utopian to think that there will be no differences between union and management. Only 300 grievances a year may be referred to the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), but a lot more cases are handled at the plant level. Sometimes, issues cover non-payment of overtime, or unfair dismissal or unreasonable working hours.

Unions provide an important outlet for workers to express their unhappiness, seek redress for unfair treatment and shape decisions that affect their lives. It can be described as a form of democracy at work. Imagine what could happen if there are no unions? There may be more conflicts, as individual workers take matters into their own hands.

Examples of how workers have benefitted from union intervention abound. In one case, a company refused to pay for the hospitalisation costs of a worker who met with an accident outside working hours, although this was provided for in the collective agreement. The company argued that they were liable only for medical costs incurred due to an illness, and not when an employee meet with an accident while riding his motorcycle. The union took up the matter, and the company paid the worker.

In another case, two workers with more than ten years of service were dismissed with no reasons given. When the union took up the case, the management could not justify their action, and subsequently paid compensation to the two unfairly dismissed workers.

Yet, despite this, the labour movement is better known for the social and recreational benefits that we provide. Little is known of the core functions that our unions perform. This could be because we do not highlight such cases, in the belief that it is easier to solve cases quietly rather than in the full view of the public.

But in today’s context, where people are demanding for more openness, and more information sharing, it is questionable whether this approach is sustainable. Also, in our public messages, we have projected a very responsible and long-term perspective of issues.
 
For example, our theme for this year’s May Day and the coming ordinary delegates’ conference is “ Resilient workforce, dynamic Singapore”. Compare this with the American Federation of Labour – Congress of Industrial Organisations’ (AFL-CIO) recent congress, where the theme is on collective bargaining and job security.

This is something that we do routinely but don’t talk about, as we feel that there are more critical challenges that we need to convey in our public messages, for both our workers and the general public. As a result, people may think that we do not fight hard enough to represent workers’ interest at work.

Indeed, it is hard to maintain a balance between quiet diplomacy and public advocacy when it comes to industrial relations. Often, we do better through quiet diplomacy. But times have changed, and giving people a better insight into what we do may be helpful to workers’ cause.

What do unions do? We provide workers with a sense of dignity and respect, we provide a voice for workers to influence decisions at work and we ensure that they get a fair share of the fruits of their labour. That’s what we do all the time. The challenge is how to convey all this succinctly and clearly while preserving good labour-management relations.