Partnership of trust still robust in Singapore

Singapore

SINGAPORE is about the only country in the world where tripartism is still working well, but it faces big challenges ahead, an international industrial relations specialist has said.

Sarosh Kuruvilla, a professor of industrial relations and Asian studies at Cornell University, said at the International Forum On Tripartism in Singapore on Monday: "The continuous vitality of tripartism in Singapore stands in contrast to its decline in most of the rest of the world."

The idea of getting government, businesses and workers to work together to keep the industrial peace and economy humming first appeared in western Europe. The practice went through a golden age between the 1950s and 1970s in countries like Denmark, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK, where it promote…