Ten facts you may never know about our useless pro-government national trade union NTUC:-
1. Formed in 6 September 1961 and now has 770,000 members since August 2013.
2. It currently has 61 affiliated trade unions and 1 affiliated taxi association.
3. When another leftist trade union SATU (Singapore Association of Trade Unions) collapsed in 1963 due to Operation Coldstore - detention of union leaders - NTUC became the official trade union since then.
4. Over 98% of union members belonged to NTUC now.
5. After the PAP's decisive electoral victory in 1968, the government passed the Industrial Relations (Amendment) Act of 1968, which severely limited workers' rights to strike. From 1969, the NTUC adopted, in its own words, "a cooperative, rather than a confrontational policy towards employers."
6. Relations between PAP and NTUC are very close, and have often resulted in members holding office in both organizations at the same time. The NTUC's founder, Devan Nair, was a PAP stalwart and later served as President of Singapore.
7. Trade unions in Singapore are run along democratic lines, and membership is voluntary. Major decisions on industrial actions are taken only with majority support expressed through secret ballot.
8. There are three tiers of union leadership, all elected via secret ballot. Workers in a company elect their branch leaders. The next layer is the executive committee of a union. Officials from the executive committee are drawn from the branches. At the national level, there is the Central Committee of the NTUC. The 21-member Central Committee is elected every four years.
9. Union leaders and employers serve on key institutions such as the National Wages Council, the Economic Development Board, the Central Provident Fund and the Singapore Productivity and Standards Board. Government and employer representatives also serve on the boards of the cooperatives, business ventures and other organizations controlled by NTUC.
10. There are two main groups of members: Ordinary Branch (OB) members are directly represented by the unions/affiliates and enjoy direct collective bargaining rights, while General Branch (GB) members, who work in non-unionised companies, cannot be represented directly but are given workplace advice and whose employment issues are still handled professionally. NTUC also works with social enterprises like NTUC FairPrice and NTUC Link, as well as partners like NTUC Club and NTUC Healthcare to provide a range of core and lifestyle benefits for all of its members
Editor's note: Information gathered from Wikipedia.
Gilbert Goh