Lim Boon Heng: A steady hand for workers, a quiet architect of trust

When Lim Boon Heng agreed in January 1981 to join NTUC, it was not a natural or easy decision.

He was then working at Neptune Orient Lines (NOL) when then NTUC Secretary-General Lim Chee Onn approached him to enter the Labour Movement. Mr Lim Boon Heng had only recently begun his political career. Accepting the role meant committing himself fully to a path he was still growing into.

He later reflected that if he was to take that path seriously, he had to be “whole-hearted.” It was a decision that would shape more than four decades of Singapore’s labour history.

Entering a Labour Movement defined by distrust

Mr Lim joined NTUC at a time when industrial relations in Singapore were still described as “very much confrontational.”

Union-employer relations carried remnants of earlier decades of tension. Trust was not yet institutionalised.

Over the next quarter-century, as he rose through the ranks—Deputy Director (1981–1983), Assistant Secretary-General (1983–1987), Deputy Secretary-General (1987–1991), and eventually Secretary-General from October 1993 to December 2006—Mr Lim would help entrench trust as the foundation of Singapore’s tripartite system. Alongside his NTUC-level leadership roles, he served Executive Secretary of the Singapore Manual & Mercantile Workers’ Union (SMMWU), adviser to 11 affiliated unions, NTUC Club Chairman, and the Ong Teng Cheong Institute of Labour Studies Appointing Governor.

These roles placed him at the heart of some of Singapore’s most consequential labour negotiations.

The 1985–1986 recession and the CPF cut

Mr Lim’s defining test came during Singapore’s 1985–1986 recession, the country’s first since independence.

The downturn followed the high-wage policy of 1979–1981, during which annual wage increases of 20 per cent and rising CPF contribution rates, reaching 25 per cent for employers and employees, significantly raised business costs.

As Deputy Secretary-General under then NTUC Secretary-General Ong Teng Cheong, Mr Lim helped steer one of the most challenging episodes in labour relations: the 1985–1986 cut in employers’ CPF contributions.

NTUC leaders went union by union, explaining that the cut was necessary to preserve jobs and restore competitiveness.

Workers agreed, but only on the condition that contributions would be restored once the economy recovered.

The Government honoured that commitment, reinstating CPF rates in stages. This episode marked more than an economic adjustment; it established trust as the operating currency of tripartism.

That same mechanism was deployed again during the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. By then, discussions between unions, employers and Government were faster and more constructive, reflecting a maturing tripartite culture.

Mr Lim’s personal relationships—with employer representatives like then Singapore National Employers’ Federation President Stephen Lee and officers from the Ministry of Manpower (MOM)—often enabled consensus to be reached informally, even drafting the National Wages Council (NWC) guidelines late into the night at his Seletar Hills home.

1995: Mr Lim Boon Heng (left) with Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (centre) and SNEF President Stephen Lee (right) at the NTUC Ordinary Delegates' Conference.

Building social enterprises with a purpose

Mr Lim believed the Labour Movement’s responsibility extended beyond wages and collective agreements. It had to address the everyday cost pressures confronting workers.

Under his leadership, NTUC built a suite of social enterprises that combined commercial discipline with social purpose.

In the 1990s, amid rising private housing prices, NTUC Choice Homes was set up to pioneer Executive Condominiums. The initiative helped moderate market pricing behaviour and generated more than S$400 million in committed surpluses for the Labour Movement.

NTUC Eldercare, today known as NTUC Health, grew from a single Meet-the-People case involving a working woman struggling to pay for her mother’s nursing care.

From elder daycare centres, NTUC Health now operates nursing homes, daycare centres and senior activity centres, providing not-for-profit care for an ageing population.

Mr Lim also oversaw governance reform in early childhood education. NTUC Childcare, taken over from the former Ministry of Social Affairs, was converted into a co-operative in the early 1990s to improve flexibility and accountability.

Now known as NTUC First Campus, it has since become Singapore’s largest preschool operator.

Other initiatives during Mr Lim’s tenure helped to address daily cost-of-living challenges.

NTUC Foodfare offered affordable meals to keep hawker food accessible. Mercatus, a co-operative established to own and manage malls, anchored community spaces like Ang Mo Kio Hub, NEX and Jurong Point.

Each initiative reflected the same principle: commercial discipline anchored by social purpose.

A legacy of governance

As secretary-general, Mr Lim was preoccupied not only with what NTUC delivered but how it was governed.

He questioned weak expenditure approvals and pushed to convert NTUC departments into co-operatives with clearer accountability.

He championed core co-operative principles—fixed par value shares and the reinvestment of surpluses for social good.

This philosophy culminated in the consolidation of union shareholdings under NTUC Enterprise in 2012, strengthening oversight across social enterprises while preserving social mission.

It was institutional engineering—less visible than crisis negotiations, but arguably just as important.

A Labour Movement rooted in trust

Lim Boon Heng’s legacy within NTUC and Singapore’s Labour Movement is not defined by confrontation or spectacle.

It is defined by steadiness.

His deeper legacy lies in a Labour Movement that learned to negotiate in good faith, act decisively in crisis and build institutions that serve workers beyond the workplace.

From CPF negotiations during recession, to social enterprises addressing housing, childcare and eldercare, to governance reforms that strengthened accountability, his work helped entrench tripartism as a durable feature of Singapore’s economic model.

Today, Singapore’s labour relations framework is often cited as a competitive advantage—marked by dialogue rather than disruption.

That unique culture was not inevitable. It was built.

And Lim Boon Heng will always be remembered as one of its principal architects. 

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