Skilled essential tradesmen are people like your plumbers, electricians, and air-conditioning & mechanical ventilation mechanics.
Still remember the viral Facebook post of a Singaporean man who paid $100 to a plumber for a 5-minute job?
In case you don’t remember, here’s a quick summary of what happened:
- A Singaporean man’s toilet bowl got choked
- He tried to fix it himself but none of his methods worked
- He then decided to call a professional plumber in to help him fix his toilet bowl
- The plumber came, used his tools, poked the hole five times, flushed twice and his toilet bowl was fixed. In just 5 minutes. Chop chop curry pok
- The Singaporean man was billed $100
In his post, the Singaporean man said he “didn’t know whether to laugh or cry” when he saw the bill. But he also said that that’s how it is lah. Because if we cannot do it ourselves, then we let the professionals do it lor. And the price we are paying them is not just for their time, but also for their experience and skills.
He then ended his Facebook post by saying that: “If they can do it in 5 minutes, it’s because they are damn good at what they do and deserve whatever they charge. That’s valuable.”
Why need to help these skilled essential tradesmen leh?
You see ah, the jobs of these skilled tradesmen are actually very essential to our lives one, but often not “attractive” enough to attract local talents to join these sectors.
Their pay also not say very high. The median wage of these workers is about $2,600 in 2022, which is near the threshold for lower-wage workers.
And yet, these skilled trades require extensive training and work experience to gain the level of expertise needed to do the job well.
“There is a national need to ensure that essential services such as water and power are safeguarded. If the current challenges facing skilled essential trades are not addressed, we will see a critical lack of local expertise in these sectors in 10 years’ time. That is why we are proposing the development of the ‘Career Progression Model’ (CPM) for skilled essential tradesmen so that they can have a viable career in these trades; and sustain the continued supply of local talent in these sectors, ” said NTUC Secretary-General Ng Chee Meng.
What is NTUC going to do?
Hence, to address the current challenges faced by the skilled essential trades and also to attract more local talents to join these trades, the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) said in a press release that they will be working with stakeholders to put in place a Career Progression Model (CPM) that would translate to better work prospects and better wages in these skilled essential trades.
This includes supporting skilled essential tradesmen to develop their skills, attain mastery, and build long-term careers.
The proposed CPM approach aims to professionalise skilled essential trades by working with industry stakeholders to:
- Introduce structured technical skills competency frameworks that may translate into better career prospects and better wages.
- Define more training pathways leading from tertiary education into skilled essential trades.
- Publicise clear and transparent quality standards for respective sectors.
- Incentivise companies to implement productivity and technological improvements. E.g., through the NTUC Company Training Committee (CTC) Grant.
That’s not all!
Come 23 February, NTUC will be holding a #EveryWorkerMatters Conversation to engage the tradesmen.
They also added that they will continue to work with the relevant stakeholders, unions, tradesmen, and trade associations to gather their feedback and views to collaborate on the CPM for skilled essential tradesmen.
