Mr Speaker, not long ago, I was at a stop light in Punggol when an autonomous shuttle glided past. I was not the only one watching. Around me, drivers and pedestrians looked up - a mix of curiosity and something quieter. A low, humming anxiety, fringed with a dash of awe. And behind their eyes, a very human question: what does this mean for me?
That image has stayed with me. AI and autonomous technology are transforming the way we work, live and play - faster than any technology humankind has seen. So, the question this House must answer today is not how these technologies work, but what we are doing - concretely, deliberately - to make sure our workers' lives and livelihoods are not left behind.
Mr. Speaker, that is what this Motion is really about. And I want to speak to it not with mere assurances, but with a plan. A plan for our workers, our union members and brothers and sisters sitting up in the gallery supporting us on this Motion.
The reality of AI transformation on the ground
The transformation is already happ
ening, quietly, all around us. At Changi Airport, autonomous baggage tractors ferry luggage between terminals. At Marina Barrage service road, autonomous sweepers clear leaves and litter. At Pasir Panjang Terminal, driverless Automated Guided Vehicles move containers between yards. And our first revenue-generating autonomous bus services are set to run on two routes in the second half of this year.
Start with workers: ground-up job redesign
Upskilling has rightly been at the forefront. But job redesign is equally critical - to reengineer existing jobs for new realities, to create new job types, and to support our workers through transitions as AI reshapes job longevity. And for job redesign to truly move the needle, it must be a genuine, ground-up effort - with workers and their real workflows at the centre. Let me elaborate.
First - consult workers deliberately, to really understand their work. As Executive Secretary of the National Transport Workers' Union, I have seen first-hand what it looks like when Tripartism works. Our management partners - SBST, SMRT and others - have been preparing our Bus Captains and Technicians for the advent of AI, EVs and AVs. Employers provide upskilling and training. Government supports companies and workers through that process. And unions do what we do best: listen carefully on the ground to what workers truly need.
It is exactly that ground listening surfaced something we would otherwise have missed. Even as we move towards 50% of our bus fleet becoming electric by 2030, our Bus Captains flagged that EV training had important gaps. Unlike conventional buses that use mirrors, EVs use digital monitors - and our Captains told us about the time delay, the glare, the eye strain, and in more severe cases, nausea. They asked for longer training and preparation time. The union pushed it with our Tripartite partners, and it was addressed.
Mr Speaker, that is feedback no consultant's report would have surfaced. But it directly shapes bus design, driver safety and passenger experience. Workers know their jobs better than anyone. That is a resource we must keep on tapping.
In anticipation of our first AV bus services, NTWU last year surveyed around 500 Bus Captains and Technicians. One in three expressed concern that AVs would affect their jobs - job security was the top worry, followed by fears of pay cuts. Unsurprising. These are sentiments shared by transport workers worldwide. Yet one in three of our Singaporeans also remained confident that drivers would continue to play an important role. So, we dug deeper. We sat with Bus Captains and asked them to walk us through a day's work - not what their job description said, but what they actually did.
What they told us turned our assumptions upside down. On paper, we assumed driving was the core of a Bus Captain's job - perhaps 80% of their tasks. Our Captains told us it is closer to 20%. The other 80% - helping elderly passengers board safely, managing crowding, de-escalating difficult situations, giving directions, being a calm and reassuring presence on board, even telling passengers they can only have a singing performance when seated - these are deeply human responsibilities that no autonomous vehicle can replace.
This has profound implications. If we had acted on our paper assumptions about the Bus Captain role, we would have misjudged job sizes, skill requirements, and salary structures - creating inequitable outcomes for workers and HR planning disasters for organisations alike. Getting the job description right is not a bureaucratic exercise. It is the foundation on which all of job redesign rests.
Mr. Speaker, the unions and the Tripartite Jobs Council will continue to walk the ground. But we cannot do this alone - not if we are serious about job redesign at scale. I call on the Government to resource this work properly: to fund the systematic study and mapping of actual job roles and workflows, so that job redesign is built on ground truth, not assumptions.
No worker left behind: transition support must be real
Mr. Speaker, my second point is this: for AI transformation to succeed, workers and customers must be at the centre of the reimagination process of what AI can bring to workers and businesses. Not consulted after the fact. Not informed of decisions already made. At the centre, right from the start.
AI will transform work as we know it. But where exactly it will land — which tasks, which roles, which industries — nobody can fully predict. That is precisely why the reimagination process matters so much. We cannot wait until the dust settles. We have to build, prepare, and yes, dare to dream of what an AI-powered workplace can look like — together with our workers. And the most important lesson I have taken from visiting companies in transformation is this: when you involve workers early and genuinely, they do not resist change. They drive it.
Mr. Speaker, let me tell you about Trusted Hub. A Singapore SME, twenty-five years in business, in the business of data processing — which, at its heart, is what AI is. Rewind to 2001: Trusted Hub was handling government submissions from members of the public. Stacks and stacks of paper. Photocopiers, faxes, and prints. Fast forward to 2026 — same business, more or less the same clients, but a completely different way of working. AI now processes much of the data, taking the load off their staff.
What impressed me when I visited was not the technology. It was the people. Because Trusted Hub brought their workers into the reimagination process as stakeholders — not passengers — the majority of their staff have upskilled themselves to programme AI Agents, creating both enterprise and innovation value for the company. And the oldest AI Agent programmer in the company? A gentleman in his sixties. Self-taught. That is what happens when you do not underestimate your workers.
I have spoken in this House before about FairPrice’s Store of Tomorrow at Punggol Coast Mall — featured at international trade shows as a model for the supermarket of the future, and a living showcase of how technology can make work better, easier and safer for workers. It displaces fear not with words, but with evidence people can walk into and see for themselves.
But what made it work was not the AI. It was the process. Workers and unions shaped and designed the system — not inherit it. And because of that, staff did not just accept the change. They owned it.
And I want more of this. Stores of Tomorrow. Bus Interchanges of Tomorrow. Restaurants of Tomorrow. Clinics of Tomorrow. Living testbeds that allow reimagination to happen not just within companies, but across clusters and communities — so that the conversation about AI in the workplace can take place openly, candidly, and with imagination rather than dread. Very much like my Punggol residents watching our autonomous shuttle glide by — a low hum of anxiety, yes, but fringed with a dash of awe.
While the shape of tomorrow’s workplace is still forming, one thing is clear: putting workers and work processes at the centre of transformation is not optional — it is the method. What does that look like in practice? It is Chye Thiam Maintenance offering a $200 training allowance to workers who volunteer to be trained on their Robosweepers — making transformation something workers choose, not something done to them. It is Grab working with unions to assess whether an AV shuttle safety driver can sustain a full eight-hour shift on continuous alert — because worker welfare is part of the design, not an afterthought. And it is a British entrepreneur who has started calling his AI Bots “AI Employees” — to remind himself, and his team, that AI is not about replacing people but about changing roles.
These are not grand gestures. They are the small, deliberate but very significant acts that normalise AI in the workplace — and make it something workers can see themselves thriving in, rather than being displaced by. And this involves responsible employers, progressive employees and indeed a supportive and nurturing Government. It is the Tripartite Way. And it is why the Tripartite Jobs Council matters so much — to organise, to set the tone, right from the start, on how AI is embedded and rewarded in everyday company life.
Mr. Speaker, this is the real answer to unfounded fears about AI displacement — not reassurances, but evidence. Evidence that when workers are treated as co-creators, transformation is faster, adoption is stronger, and outcomes are better for everyone.
The Tripartite Jobs Council is well-placed to drive this reimagination work at every level — through Company Training Committees, CTC Queen Bees at cluster level, and sectoral AI uplift plans across industries. Our Queen Bees can bring their contractor ecosystems along, as FairPrice has done with their Store of Tomorrow. And unions will do what we do best: walk workers and management through what the road ahead looks like, and what new roles are emerging along the way.
But Mr. Speaker, this requires investment and intentionality. I call on the Government to resource sectoral AI uplift plans for industries — retail, logistics, healthcare — with the same deliberateness that has started to guide our AV roadmap for public transport. Workers deserve to know not just that AI is coming, but where the next testbeds will be, what the new jobs will look like, and how to get there. Clarity is not a luxury. For workers standing at that crossroads, it is everything.
‘Mr Speaker, my third point is this: even the best-run AI transition will see jobs disappearing and some occupations finding the tasks they do taken over by AI. That is the honest truth. And we should not paper over it with optimism. Hence, transition support must be real, timely, and it must reach those who need it most.
We owe our workers a system that catches them before they fall too far — and gets them back to a good job as quickly as possible. And that system must start with job redesign. Not as an afterthought but as the first line of defence. If we redesign jobs well and early, we reduce the number of workers who need to be caught in the first place. The best transition support is one that makes the cliff shorter to begin with.
That is why the signal we send to enterprises matters so much. AI Grants should be tied to mandatory job redesign requirements and productivity gains linked to worker outcomes. If these enterprises are unable to retain workers, these companies should be required to notify the government early on personnel whom they are unable to retain, so that these displaced workers can be assisted by e2i and the newly-formed Tripartite Jobs Council. This will be the assurance to workers that Singapore’s AI transition will not result in jobless growth and that we keep the transition time to a new good job as short as possible.
Mr. Speaker, I am heartened by the Prime Minister's assurance during Budget 2026 that the autonomous vehicle transition will be managed carefully, with close engagement with Platform Worker Associations and our platform drivers. As Advisor to the National Taxi Association, the National Private Hire Vehicles Association, I want to speak directly to that.
In Mandarin please, Speaker.
我们的德士和私召车司机，已经在竞争激烈、油价高涨的环境中打拼。如今，看到榜鹅的自动驾驶车上路，听到自动驾驶巴士试点的消息，心里难免有一份不太说出口的担忧。他们不是要我们停止科技发展，但他们需要的，不只是安慰，而是清楚的方向。
自动驾驶的"地理围栏"会如何逐步推行？时间表是怎样？新岗位——例如我们的远程操作员、安全监督员——正在出现，我希望有意愿的司机能得到支持，接受培训，顺利转型。对于暂时无法转行的司机，我希望SWDA能细致了解他们各自的需要。他们不是一个单一群体，不能用一种方式来对待。
这不只是平台司机的问题。我们的技工、技术人员，用双手维持着新加坡的运作，但在人工智能的讨论中，他们往往没有被看见，他们的贡献也长期未获足够重视。
我很高兴人力部已经在电工领域开始推动。我们要继续努力，为技工建立更有前景、更受尊重的职业路程，善用人工智能增强他们的能力，而不是取代他们的判断力。
A clear call to action for Government
Mr. Speaker, the workers most exposed to AI disruption are often the ones with the least buffer — least savings, least flexibility, least time to wait for a system to catch up with them. That is why our response must be Tripartite in the fullest sense. Employers and platform partners must lean in as their business models evolve — not step back. That means staying involved in transition support: co-sharing training costs, covering opportunity costs, and supporting workers through both employment and post-employment pathways. Unions will do what we have always done — walk the ground, listen, and shape livelihood opportunities alongside our workers. And we will continue to “jaga rumah” by keeping watch on what other jurisdictions are doing. From China's Internet Court ruling that AI replacement alone is not grounds for dismissal, to California's requirement for human safety operators on autonomous vehicles — these are signals of a world working out where the boundaries are. Singapore must learn from them, and where necessary, get ahead of them. And Government must design transition support around the people who need it, not around what is administratively convenient. That is the standard we must hold ourselves to.
Mr Speaker, I will conclude with three calls to the Government.
Give time. Job redesign cannot be rushed. It requires sitting with workers, understanding what their work really is — not what the job description says — and going back to the ground when the first answer turns out to be incomplete, as ours was with the bus captains. Companies need to be supported through this, not just pushed.
Give help on the reimagination piece. Most companies — especially our SMEs — cannot do this alone. I look to the Government to provide practical facilitation, frameworks, and funding that makes job redesign achievable. And I look to our leading companies — our ‘queen bees’ — to step forward, share what has been worked on, and bring their sectors along with them. Transformation that stays within one company is transformation only half done.
Make NTUC the linkway. Our unions, our e2i, our Tripartite Jobs Council — we are already on the ground, in the companies with the CTCs, sitting across the table from workers and employers every day. We have the trust that took many years to build. Our Labour Movement is ready to be the connective tissue of this transition — matching displaced workers to redesigned roles, advocating for fair treatment, and holding everyone, including ourselves, to account.
SWDA and our agencies must build on this.
Mr. Speaker, I think back to that autonomous shuttle gliding through Punggol. Our workers watching it are not asking us to stop it. They are asking us to make sure that as it moves forward, they move forward too. That is the answer we owe them. Not just a promise. A plan.
I believe that an AI transition with no jobless growth is possible. Not because the technology will take care of it. But because we will — if we consult workers properly, involve them in the reimagination of their work, and back that up with transition support that actually reaches the people who need it most.
I support the Motion. Thank you.
