The delegates were not only impressed by the success of measures to save jobs, they were also impressed by the strength of the economic recovery and Singapore's ability to regain full employment quickly. -- ST PHOTO: ALAN LIM
SINGAPORE'S approach to tackling the downturn drew interest and admiration from delegates at the recent International Labour Organisation (ILO) annual conference in Geneva.
Not only were delegates impressed by the success of measures to save jobs, they were also impressed by the strength of the economic recovery and Singapore's ability to regain full employment quickly.
Much of this boiled down to Singapore's unique system of tripartism, labour chief Lim Swee Say, who is also Minister in the Prime Minister's Office, said in his annual message for National Day released on Sunday.
'Singapore's approach to tripartism is good for our workers. We avoided massive retrenchments and prevented a rapid rise in unemployment. It is also good for our businesses. We preserved our economic capacity and upgraded our economic capability to grow again in a global recovery,' he noted.
At the ILO meeting in June, Singapore's delegation - led by Manpower Minister Gan Kim Yong and including representatives from the National Trades Union Congress and the Singapore National Employers Federation - was asked to make a presentation on how the country coped with the downturn, and how it was riding the upturn.
Mr Lim said delegates - representatives from the United States, Europe and Asia - were impressed by the strategy of cutting costs to save jobs, as opposed to cutting jobs to save costs.
