This economic downturn affects everyone, including NTUC’s 12 Social Enterprises (SE), which will also come under strain. But the NTUC SEs pledge to do all they can to save jobs and help families overcome this downturn as members of a united Labour Movement (LM).
Upturn the Downturn
The current downturn is the worst the world has seen since World War II. It has been affecting people and businesses in every strata of society. Despite the economic pressures NTUC SEs face, they will continue to help workers and families upturn the downturn. NTUC SEs will do all they can to:
Moderate Cost of Living
NTUC SEs will continue to keep their products and services at reasonable and affordable prices. For instance, NTUC FairPrice has extended its 5 per cent housebrand discounts till December 2009. This will cost NTUC FairPrice a total of $12 million since its inception from December 2007 to December 2009. NTUC FairPrice will also continue to ensure that its basket of 400 EveryDayLowPrice items are lower or at least equal to its competitors’ price for the same products. NTUC FairPrice has further embarked on the Yellow Dot scheme, which features cheaper items to budget-conscious consumers. Lower-priced items of good value – from rice, eggs, sugar, cooking oil, coffee powder, biscuits to jams – that are labelled with the Yellow Dot are up to 25 per cent cheaper than even its housebrand items. NTUC Income has launched a $6 million special assistance scheme to help its lower-income and elderly Incomeshield policyholders cope with premium revisions. NTUC Healthcare, through its pharmacy chain, maintains the affordability of a basket of 200 essential items. NTUC First Campus maintains fees at 15 per cent to 20% below national median fees. NTUC Club keeps family recreation affordable and accessible through its Family Recreation FUNd vouchers.
Help Retrenched Workers
Families with children and the elderly will continue to enjoy the services of NTUC First Campus and NTUC Eldercare even if a family member were to be retrenched. In collaboration with OCBC, NTUC First Campus has extended its Bright Horizons Trust (BHT) Fund to help children of retrenched parents. OCBC donated $200,000, which was added to the $300,000 set aside by BHT Fund for this purpose. With this collaboration, more retrenched parents will get to enjoy childcare fee subsidies. Similar subsidies are also available under the Eldercare Trust Fund. NTUC Thrift allows loan repayments to be rescheduled for retrenched members, and NTUC Choice Homes is waiving its first six months of maintenance charges for buyers of Yew Tee Residences who have been retrenched.
Contribute to NTUC U Care Fund
NTUC SEs have contributed generously to NTUC U Care fund. This will help scale up NTUC Care and Share programmes to reach more workers and their families in this downturn. NTUC SEs’ corporate partners have also joined in the LM’s fund-raising efforts. For example, NTUC Choice Homes rallied support from its corporate partners to donate $334,600 to NTUC U Care fund.
SEs as model employers
As model employers that care, NTUC SEs will take the lead during this downturn to act on the LM’s worker-centric commitments.
NTUC SEs will:
Avoid retrenchment.
NTUC SEs will cut costs to save jobs in this downturn. Retrenchment will be the last resort.
Avoid record unemployment.
As the NTUC SEs continue to grow, they will hire more workers, which include those who have been retrenched, back-to-work women and mature workers. The spectrum of jobs available will include both rank-and-file workers as well as Professionals, Managers,Executives and Technicians.
Grow their business through skills upgrading.
NTUC SEs will send their workers for training to upgrade their skills. This will also help position NTUC SEs for further growth when the economy recovers. For example, NTUC FairPrice and NTUC Club have sent their staff for Customer-Centric Initiative (CCI) training to improve their service standards. The benefits derived from better-trained service staff serves as an exemplary example for the other NTUC SEs to embark on CCI.
Reaching out to more and making the difference
The collective goal of NTUC SEs is to deliver good quality goods and services at affordable rates that are widely accessible. For example, NTUC FairPrice has been able to help moderate cost of living because it has a network of 222 stores in several formats that serves 1.5 million shoppers each week. Likewise, other NTUC SEs will look to expand their capacity to help more people. NTUC First Campus is expanding its network of My First Skool and The Little Skool-House childcare centres in response to the Government’s call to improve the quality of the pre-school sector. NTUC Foodfare is opening more foodcourts and coffeeshops to serve more members. NTUC Link is delivering more than $8 million worth of LinkPoints savings to members, and is further strengthening the LinkPoints Programme by adding more merchants and partners as well as offering better rewards and exclusive privileges. NTUC LearningHub is ramping up its capacity to retrain workers under the Skills Programme for Upgrading and Resilience (SPUR),in close partnership with e2i (Employment and Employability Institute).
NTUC SEs are driven by their social role to make a significant impact to the lives of working people and their families in Singapore in both good and bad times.
Standing united, they are ever ready to do even more to help.
“This global downturn is likely to be longer and deeper than previous ones. Many have been affected: retrenched workers have lost their jobs; rank-and-file workers have lost their overtime; excess workers have taken on shorter work week and suffered wage cuts; older workers could not get re-employed; unskilled workers have been pressured by cheap sourcing; and the list goes on.
NTUC Social Enterprises have responded exceedingly well in this downturn. They stepped up their DO GOOD efforts by keeping prices of goods and services as low as possible for workers and members of the public. At the same time, they stepped forward with their DO WELL efforts by cutting costs to save jobs and avoiding retrenchment. They also responded to the tripartite partners’ call to upgrade workers’ skills, productivity and service quality, and are hiring even more to expand their operations to position themselves for the upturn when the economy recovers. In short, NTUC cooperatives are doing GOOD as Social Enterprises, and DOING WELL as socially responsible employers.”
