An Artificial Intelligence (AI) Transition with No Jobless Growth

8.29 pm

Mr Ng Chee Meng (Jalan Kayu): Mr Speaker, I move*, "That this House (1) recognises the transformative power of new technologies, especially Artificial Intelligence (AI), to drive Singapore's next phase of economic development; (2) emphasises that Singapore's approach to AI-enabled growth must be anchored in fairness, resilience, and opportunity for all; (3) resolves to equip and support workers and enterprises to seize new opportunities and advance together; and (4) affirms that economic progress must remain inclusive, and that Singapore must not have jobless growth, because every worker matters."

*The Motion also stood in the names of Mr Mark Lee, Mr Saktiandi Supaat and Ms Yeo Wan Ling.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I declare my interest as the Secretary-General of the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) where together with my NTUC's sisters and brothers gathered in the Public Gallery, we champion workers' wages, welfare and work prospects.

This Motion represents the voices of our leaders and workers discussing AI transition in the last two years or so.

I want to speak today: to the young graduates wondering if their skills will be enough; to the mid-career professionals asking whether their experience still counts; to the blue-collar workers worried if they will have good jobs in an AI-enabled economy.

Since Independence, Singapore's growth has been anchored in a simple but powerful compact: as our economy advances, our workers advance together. Today, in an AI-enabled world, we must renew that compact, deliberately and together.

AI is no longer just a tool. It is reshaping how work is done, how we serve customers and how value is created.

Consulting firms, such as KPMG and Accenture, are starting to include the use of AI to achieve business outcomes as a staff assessment. More recently, leading technology firms, like Meta and Microsoft, have announced global restructuring plans.

AI may not be the only driver of these changes. But they show clearly that the nature of work is changing fast.

Workers are anxious and paying close attention. I understand these concerns. AI is impacting junior roles, which were once the first rung of a career ladder. Routine, process-heavy tasks are increasingly automated.

Across the economy, AI is reducing the need for junior staff to spend long hours on data processing and standardised modelling. AI is also reshaping professional, manager and executive (PME) jobs in higher-end professions, like doctors, lawyers and accountants. At the same time, AI is also creating new jobs, new roles.

But even as new opportunities emerge, workers have real and understandable concerns. Young graduates ask: where do I start, and how do I build the right skills when the first rung is now higher? Many mid-career PMEs and workers ask: will my experience count? Will my experience continue to matter? How can AI strengthen my role and not replace me?

Taken together, these shifts challenge the assumption that economic growth will always lead to more and better jobs.

Our economic agencies continue to bring in good investments. The Government has set out clear ambitions to strengthen an AI-enabled economy. But for many Singaporeans on the ground, two questions remain: how can I take part in this growth and benefit from it? How will this growth translate into fair opportunities for me?

Around the world, we can see the extremes of what happens when these questions are left unanswered.

On one extreme, some societies allow technology to race ahead. Displaced workers are left to fend for themselves. Economists warn of scars when job disruption is unmanaged. At the other extreme, fear takes hold. Workers push back defensively. In Hollywood, writers and actors have taken to picket lines and public demonstrations over the use of AI.

These are not paths that we want for Singapore. This is why today, my fellow Parliamentarians and I put forward this Motion to set out a clear agenda for AI adoption, one that strengthens Singapore's competitiveness, supports our enterprises and empowers our workers. We must build on our tripartite strengths for this new AI-enabled era to ensure that it benefits all workers.

To that end, Mr Mark Lee will address the clarity for enterprises, our AI front door; Mr Saktiandi Supaat will speak on building an inclusive AI-enabled economy for Singapore; and Ms Yeo Wan Ling will speak on job redesign for the future of work.

Sir, this phase of economic growth is different from the past. AI is advancing at such speed that even its creators are acknowledging its limits and the need for guardrails, safeguards. In fact, AI has widened the scope of what one person can do quite incredibly. In many countries, "solopreneuers", or one-person outfits, are using AI to carry out work previously done by whole teams. AI is, therefore, not just reshaping jobs. It is reshaping business models and organisational structures.

Against this backdrop, the concerns raised to the Labour Movement are grounded in lived experience. One in five respondents NTUC surveyed cite job security as their top concern, linked to anxieties around AI and automation. Workers worry their skills may not keep pace. Parents are concerned about their children's employability.

Enterprises share concerns too. Many want to transform but are weighing workforce readiness and implementation costs.

Today, more than 60 AI Centres of Excellence in Singapore are supporting AI deployment across workplaces. NTUC is also seeing more than double the number of enterprises seeking support on AI-related projects and asking how to seize new opportunities.

Mr Speaker, I firmly believe that we must act early. We must strengthen our plans and responses at this stage of the AI-enabled growth, before disruption takes hold.

As Singapore pushes ahead strategically on AI, our desired outcomes are clear: to grow our economic pie as large as possible, while ensuring that this growth translates into good jobs and opportunities for Singaporeans; to enable enterprises to use AI technologies to transform and train workers to do higher-value work, take on broader roles and create more value; and to invest in our workers and empower them, preparing them early to move into AI-augmented roles.

This is the proactive AI future we must work towards because our people are our greatest strength. Not AI instead of workers, but AI working for workers across all collars, across enterprises.

I am sure that everyone in this House agrees. AI is no longer optional. Used well, it can raise productivity, unlock new possibilities and strengthen our competitiveness. But every worker, who puts in the fair share of effort must be able to see where they can fit into this new economy and be supported to get there. This is how we anchor AI-enabled growth in fairness, resilience and opportunity for all.

Singapore has never waited for disruption to hit before acting. We have always chosen to look ahead and prepare early.

When technology reshaped work in the past, tripartite partners stepped up together: during the National Computerisation Plan in the 1980s; through the Skills Programme for Upgrading and Resilience during the Global Financial Crisis; and through the NTUC Job Security Council during COVID-19, which helped thousands of workers displaced overnight to return to work.

We must do likewise in this era.

At Budget, our Government underscored the need to support workers and companies to adapt and succeed in an AI-enabled economy, with the Prime Minister chairing the National AI Council. NTUC also launched AI-Ready SG to empower more workers to use AI in their daily work, with AI-enabled tools to support jobseekers and workers of all collars.

To build further on this, tripartite partners have set up the Tripartite Jobs Council to support enterprise transformation, job redesign and worker transitions, forging win-win.

What matters now is how we take this tripartite commitment to act early and act together, with a humble approach that keeps us close to the ground, so that our AI ambitions translate into confidence and opportunities for enterprises and most importantly, Singaporeans.

Mr Speaker, Sir, to give effect to this Motion, allow me to outline four practical moves.

First, we must build market intelligence and foresight for an AI-enabled economy. In this period of rapid change, workers and enterprises do not just need more information. They need trusted intelligence, grounded in Singapore's own labour market realities. Today, workers and enterprises face a fragmented, sometimes even conflicting, view of the AI landscape. Some global reports warn of large-scale job displacement. Others say that AI is the future of white-collar work. The landing point is fuzzy and still uncertain.

That is why Singapore needs our own trusted system of market intelligence and foresight, one that reflects our sectoral mix, workforce profile and enterprise realities. Workers, both white and blue collars alike, need practical answers and guidance: which roles are evolving? Which ones are likely to disappear? Which skills will matter more? Where are the new jobs? What should I do next?

For youths, this could mean clearer signals on which skills will open doors so that training pathways can be better designed to match labour demand. It also means a less anxious transition from school to work, even as entry level roles change.

For PMEs and blue-collar workers, this means early guidance on how to upskill, use AI to augment their roles, expand their job scope and improve work prospects. With targeted reskilling, workers can raise their value and move confidently into new, redesigned or adjacent roles.

Good research can also help us avoid reactive policy-making because intervening only after displacement has occurred is far more costly, financially, economically and socially. By reskilling workers before their roles diminish, they are also far more likely to stay employed and progress.

This is why a market intelligence and foresight system, tailored to Singapore, matters. It brings together insights from trade associations on how industries are adopting AI, enterprise data on job redesign and productivity shifts, and union sensing on worker concerns, skills stress points and what upskilling is actually working. This is foresight and intelligence that Singaporeans can trust because it combines macro data on the one hand and ground realities on the other, from unions who know their workers, as well from employers navigating AI transformation.

With such a system, tripartite partners can better make sense of how work is evolving. Enterprises and workers will not be left guessing. They will have clearer direction, more time to prepare and better support to move into new opportunities.

Second, we must enable enterprises to transform with AI and do so in a way that benefits workers.

Enterprises must be empowered to adopt AI, with workers actively involved so that transformation delivers stronger business performance and better workforce outcomes. We can already see some possibilities of what can happen when AI adoption is intentional, phased and paired with workforce upgrading.

At Port of Singapore Authority (PSA), supported by the Singapore Port Workers Union and the Port Officers' Union, AI-enabled systems are progressively rolled out to improve operational planning and safety. At ST Engineering Land Systems, together with the ST Engineering Staff Union and the former SkillsFuture Singapore, workers across more than 40 suppliers are being trained in AI and new precision engineering tools to meet the evolving needs of advanced manufacturing.

But small and medium enterprises (SMEs) often face tighter constraints in resources, expertise and bandwidth. This matters because SMEs employ about 70% of our workforce. Supporting more SMEs means more workers can benefit from AI-enabled transformation.

Across enterprises large and small, we must ensure that training, job progression and wage outcomes are built into the transformation process from Day One. This is how growth stays inclusive. Worker outcomes must be part of the business transformation plans, not left to chance or treated as an afterthought.

This is why NTUC pioneered the concept of the Company Training Committee, so that transformation uplifts businesses and workers together. Since the first Company Training Committee in 2019, we have formed more than 3,800 Company Training Committees, with projects and training benefiting more than 300,000 blue- and white-collar workers. We forged skills training, job redesign and clearer career development pathways together with transforming businesses.

Let me illustrate what this looks like in practice in the healthcare sector.

Tan Tock Seng Hospital and the Healthcare Services Employees' Union are tapping on the Company Training Committee to scale PreSAGE. PreSAGE is a smart patient monitoring system for fall-risk patients. It uses an AI-trained system with thermal sensors above the patient's bed to capture heat patterns. When the patient is predicted to enter an unsafe fall zone, the AI system triggers an alert to nurses to respond.

This system is always on. It watches out for patients 24/7. This means nurses no longer need to go ward after ward, potentially across 1,200 beds, to manually check where the fall sensor mats need to be placed. This new workflow is faster and smarter and less demanding.

This is what AI-augmenting work looks like. AI changes tasks and workflows. It designs out tedious, repetitive, labour-intensive work and it makes, in this case, nursing more sustainable and meaningful, especially also for the older staff.

We are also partnering GP+ Co-operative to support general practitioners (GPs) to use AI, to upskill clinic staff on case documentation and raise overall productivity. In this case, NTUC and our unions stand with GP doctors, not only as healthcare professionals but also as small business owners navigating change.

The Company Training Committee works because it is built on a win-win foundation – enterprises transform and workers progress with them.

Up to now, the Labour Movement has spearheaded the Company Training Committee initiative. Going forward, I propose that we do so together with the Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF) as part of the new Tripartite Jobs Council. In other words, both NTUC and SNEF will work together to expand and scale the Company Training Committees nation-wide. Together, with our networks, we can reach more enterprises and more workers. We can provide more focused AI-related support and achieve more win-win outcomes.

And in that process, Minister Tan See Leng is just walking back into the Chamber, we will likely need more resources for this new Company Training Committee implementation approach. NTUC will work through the details with SNEF and put up our requests for funding when ready, and we hope the Government will provide its full support.

Third, enabling workers to seize new opportunities. As AI reshapes industries and business models, the impact on jobs will continue to evolve. For our youths and our workers, having clearer signals, better pathways and practical support can help them move into new opportunities.

This support has to start early. Through the Tripartite Jobs Council, we should strengthen our outreach to IHLs so that students can gain labour-market insights and plan their career moves earlier during their studies. We can do more as an ecosystem to help our youths make informed choices and shorten the transition from school to work.

I met several young professionals recently when I visited Amazon Web Services (AWS). Some of these fresh graduates had initial anxieties but ultimately managed to secure positions after a period of job searches. Ending up in AWS is a good outcome. But it raised a question in my mind too. Could the journey have been smoother with earlier career guidance, better insight into employer needs and stronger matching for internships and entry-level roles? We can do more.

NTUC's e2i has developed an AI Career Coach to help youths and jobseekers improve their resumes, practise mock job interviews and receive feedback for improvement. Through tailored job suggestions, youths can get a boost to help with their job searches and perhaps, make the process that little bit less daunting.

For PMEs and mid-career workers, the challenge is different – 56% of PMEs surveyed by NTUC felt that they need to upskill to keep pace with AI. Our PMEs will need confidence that skills upgrading can translate into real job opportunities and that their experience will continue to matter.

To address the needs, NTUC LearningHub has developed AI skills pathways at different levels of proficiency. Since the launch of NTUC's AI-Ready SG initiative in February, more than 4,000 workers have embarked on AI training to level up their AI skills. NTUC LearningHub intends to scale these efforts under AI-Ready SG to more than one million training places over the next few years.

Our unions will do their part as well. The Union Training Assistance Programme will be expanded to help offset the cost of subscriptions to selected AI tools. Our unions will also work closely with sectoral champions to ensure that AI training for our workers is practical and support their daily work. Sector by sector, company by company, we will help enterprises and workers utilise the Company Training Committee to transform their business processes and operating models to reap the benefits of AI.

Today, there is strong demand for digital transformation and AI-related Company Training Committee projects. I visited SIN(G) Assurance PAC earlier this year, a public accounting firm that offers audit and assurance services. Journal entry testing used to involve long hours of repetitive scanning and junior auditors depended heavily on managers for technical guidance. Using the Company Training Committee grant, the firm implemented a quality management tool that eliminated tedious and time-consuming manual tracking of spreadsheets. It also adopted robotic process automation and deployed an AI-enabled chatbot to improve audit efficiency and accuracy.

Technology is now a force multiplier for SMEs like SIN(G) Assurance PAC. It enables workers to apply their professional judgement to higher-value work. Cases like these show us that when transformation is done with workers at the centre, enterprises and workers both benefit.

NTUC has co-developed AI Transformation Blueprints with AI Singapore to help companies assess their readiness, identify gaps and implement the most suitable AI solutions. We are also partnering AWS and Huawei as Lead Multipliers to bring their expertise, solutions and networks to help more enterprises and workers.

We will bring these capabilities to the Tripartite Jobs Council, so that we can pool resources and make it easier for workers of all collars to seize new opportunities as AI reshapes work.

Fourth, we must enable displaced workers to bounce back with dignity and confidence. The impact of AI on jobs will continue to evolve. We must keep a vigilant watch on emerging AI governance issues and adapt our policies, even our laws.

Keeping human-in-the-loop will be important, especially in areas like hiring, work allocation, performance management and dismissal decisions. But even with these best efforts, we must be honest that some displacement will still occur, particularly among the PMEs. In the age where AI displacement may be more pronounced, we must find ways to reach affected workers early and shorten the time between disruption and recovery. For displaced workers who have put in years of hard work, retrenchment can feel sudden and deeply unsettling, as if the ground has shifted from beneath them. That is why our support systems must act as early as possible and support these affected workers to bounce back on their feet.

I have called in this House for advance notification of retrenchments to the Government. This should be done before the employee's last working day. I am glad that this is being studied in the ongoing review of the Employment Act. The purpose is to help affected workers adapt and bounce back as quickly as possible while keeping our labour market flexible and dynamic.

In practice, especially for larger-scale retrenchments, earlier notice allows our unions, allows e2i, through its network of 27 National Career Centres, to come in early to support affected workers.

I am heartened that many companies undergoing restructuring already provide such early notification. This has allowed tripartite partners to deploy career and emotional support onsite. In such cases, we were able to offer immediate reskilling pathways and work directly with employers to line up suitable vacancies, sometimes even before the affected workers' last day of work.

Beyond job matching, displaced workers must be supported to bounce back too with dignity, with real opportunities to train, transit and move to the next good job.

Let me share one such example. Mr Hong, a mid-career IT manager in the retail industry, was retrenched when his company offshored its IT support. Despite 15 years of experience managing enterprise IT systems, his opportunities were limited. He felt dejected, lost and unsure where to restart. Thankfully, with career guidance and coaching from NTUC's e2i, Mr Hong was able to pivot to the healthcare industry as an IT manager within a short time.

Like Mr Hong, many workers feel vulnerable after retrenchment, especially after years of contribution to the same organisation. For those with a mortgage, with school-going children or with ageing parents to support, the pressure to find a job quickly is very real. That is why financial support during transition matters. It is not welfare. It is an investment in worker outcomes.

We are glad that the Government has taken on board NTUC's suggestions to introduce the SkillsFuture Jobseeker Support Scheme (JSS). It provides time-bound support, tied to active job searches and training. The Labour Movement now proposes to expand the coverage of the scheme.

Today, this JSS is pegged to a median income of about $5,000. But in the AI era, many PMEs earning above this level may face the same displacement risks and the same need for structured transition support. Adjusting coverage closer to the PME median gross income levels would better reflect the realities of the AI-driven disruption.

Our aim is not to preserve old jobs. It is to help Singaporeans move, over time, more confidently into the next good job faster. Together with earlier notification, quicker and more coordinated mobilisation, we can ensure that displaced workers recover faster and bounce back with confidence. Mr Speaker, in Mandarin, please.

(In Mandarin): In this AI era, countries are transforming rapidly, businesses are adapting and jobs are changing.

Young people are asking, "What should I study to go further in my career?" Workers are also asking, "How can my experience continue to add value in this age of AI?"

Therefore, we must act early. We must integrate business transformation with worker training to ensure that economic growth translates into quality jobs for our workers. NTUC, the Government and employers have established the Tripartite Jobs Council to drive AI transformation and employment support.

NTUC will work with institutes of higher learning to strengthen career coaching and career planning, so that graduating youths are able to find suitable jobs more quickly. At the same time, we propose for local businesses, unions and academia to jointly study the impact of AI on employment. Through NTUC's Company Training Committee Grant, we will strengthen support for businesses to adopt AI and seize new opportunities.

In doing so, white collar workers will be able to harness AI and take on higher value work. Blue collar workers will also be able to upgrade their AI skills and access new growth pathways. For those who need to switch careers, we will walk alongside them as they make a fresh start.

Mr Speaker, by staying united and through collective effort, we will be able to progress more steadily and reach greater heights in the AI era – one that every Singaporean has a place.

(In English): Mr Speaker, Sir, let me conclude. I began this speech with the questions on many workers' minds: how can I take part in the AI growth and benefit from it? How can I translate into fair opportunities for me?

Singapore has invested much in education and the skills of our workforce. As we enter the next phase of growth, we must review our steadfast commitment to support our workers. Young graduates, white collar PMEs, younger or older, blue collar workers alike.

The four practical moves I have outlined are a call for collective action in this AI transition. Act early so we understand how jobs are changing and give workers and businesses better foresight. Support enterprise transformation while uplifting workers for win-win outcomes. Enable workers to seize new opportunities as jobs evolve. And when disruption occurs, ensure that workers bounce back with dignity and confidence.

This renewed compact must be the foundation of our unique tripartism in the AI era, keeping enterprises competitive and workers firmly at the heart of our progress. Because in Singapore, every worker matters. Sir, I beg to move. [Applause.]

Mr Speaker: The question is as moved by Mr Ng Chee Meng. Mr Ng? You would like to adjourn the debate?

9.03 pm

Mr Ng Chee Meng: Yes, Sir. Timing tomorrow, Sir.

Mr Speaker: You need to move that the debate be now adjourned.