This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao.
Over 110,000 workers were matched by NTUC to new roles between 2020-2024 and the NTUC Job Security Council is evolving to meet fresh challenges from AI, global uncertainty, and rapid job disruption.
When retrenchments hit during the COVID-19 pandemic, thousands of Singaporeans turned to the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) Job Security Council (JSC) for help in finding new jobs.
Since its launch in February 2020, the JSC has supported more than 110,000 workers, from skilled technicians to professionals, with job matching and help workers find suitable jobs within a shorter period of time. Moreover, JSC also supports companies in their workforce and business transformation towards jobs with better wages, work prospects, and welfare. The NTUC JSC concept was inspired by Swedish JSCs and adapted to Singapore’s context.
Today, the global economy is becoming more volatile and uncertain, with rising protectionism and rapid advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI), skills and jobs are being disrupted again.
Given these current headwinds, it is timely to review and refresh NTUC JSC to ensure that it can continue fulfilling its mission of securing better jobs and livelihoods for our workers.
Scalability: Why the JSC Needs a Rethink
The past five years have revealed areas where the JSC can be strengthened. For instance, job matching was highly hands-on and labour intensive, relying on career coaches to personally connect workers to employers. While this human touch proved vital during the COVID-19 pandemic, the process was not easily scalable. Companies were also cautious about sharing early retrenchment information, which limited the JSC’s ability to intervene sooner to help affected workers. On the hiring side, many firms prioritised skilled workers to meet immediate business needs.
Since its inception, over 10,000 companies were involved in JSC, but this is a small fraction of the roughly 440,000 companies registered with ACRA in 2024. This means there is potential for many more employers to be involved, especially small and medium-sized enterprises.
To make a bigger impact, the JSC must evolve from a manual job matching model into a more connected ecosystem that leverages technology, industry partnerships and training support to help more workers and companies at scale.
Strengthening the JSC to Better Support Workers and Companies
First, empower every worker to become better workers through partnerships with strong Continuing Education and Training (CET) Centres.
This includes NTUC LearningHub (LHUB’s) skills upgrading and training development. In fact, LHUB provides a wide range of training courses, including foundational and intermediate AI courses, both in-person training as well as digitally through their learning app, called the Learning eXperience Platform (or LXP). NTUC will help workers cope with future changes through training and upskilling because workers continue to be central to NTUC JSC.
Second, support more job redesign efforts through business transformation, with the aim of supporting companies towards better jobs for workers, with better wages, welfare, and work prospects.
Industry-level “Queen Bee” partnership will play a key role, where companies help their staff as well as other firms within their industry ecosystems with skills training, At the same, time, the NTUC’s Company Training Committees (CTC) Grant help extend the benefit to more workers more quickly. For example, ST Logistics signed a MOU with NTUC and SkillsFuture Singapore to upskill 15,000 of its workers and support 150 vendors or suppliers in developing keys skills for sustainable business performance. Such coordinated efforts are crucial to ensure that upskilling reaches large numbers of workers and that industries remain competitive in a rapidly changing economy.
Third, move away from manual job matching by harnessing technology such as generative-artificial intelligence (AI). The NTUC’s e2i (Employment and Employability Institute) AI Career Coach is an example of an AI-enabled tool to support jobseekers and career coaches to deliver job matches in this AI economy. Other methods to enhance job matching can also be explored.
Employers As Stakeholders To Drive NTUC JSC Expansion
NTUC cannot empower workers alone and must collaborate with employers and the Government.
With more employer partners on board an enhanced NTUC JSC, more possibilities could be made available d, and more pilot programmes with the Singapore National Employers Federation member companies could be explored. Such pilots would engender trust so that the NTUC JSC can intervene earlier to support retrenched workers.
Conclusion
While the NTUC JSC has been successful in the past few years, it will need to continually evolve to remain relevant for the future. Whatever form it takes, it must support workers to seize opportunities and safeguard against threats, such as AI, global uncertainty, and industry transformation. It should empower every worker to become better workers, support companies in creating better jobs, and improve job matching to enhance workers’ access to better jobs.
NTUC will continue to improve the wages, welfare, and work prospects for all Singaporeans and support workers to navigate change because every worker matters.
The full paper is published in Volume 4 of the National Trades Union Congress’s Singapore Labour Journal
