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THE labour movement is joining hands with a group of manpower experts and academics to form a new research community, and is considering funding some of its projects.

The NTUC Labour Alliance co-laB (LAB) is a first-of-its-kind initiative by the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC). It comprises 50 members including academics, practitioners and researchers focused on advancing labour research.

Patrick Tay, NTUC’s assistant secretary-general, said that LAB’s objective is to bring together people who are passionate about issues faced by workers so that they can form partnerships to carry out joint projects or sandbox ideas.

The alliance sprang out of an informal network that started during the Covid-19 pandemic, he said, adding that these members had worked with NTUC on a series of projects and research pieces. Many of these projects were published in the first and second volumes of the Singapore Labour Journal.

Tay said NTUC involved partners from the institutes of higher learning and think tanks as it felt that it “may not have the capacity to do very, very deep research”.

“We saw this meeting of minds. Researchers and academia do so much work, and put lots of grey matter into it, but (face) the frustration of not having it translate on the ground to have impact,” Tay said. “So we provide that link and the bridge.”

At the launch of LAB on Thursday (Sep 26), labour chief Ng Chee Meng said NTUC wants to expand the ecosystem so that it can strategise and devise good labour policies that are “well-informed, impactful, balanced and beneficial” towards its stakeholders.

“Such collaboration, in my view, is vital for developing evidence-based solutions and innovative approaches that effectively address challenges faced by employers and workers,” he said.

Transformative impact

Assistant secretary-general Tay also told reporters that the labour movement is prepared to provide funding for meaningful projects that are not able to secure research funding, although he did not disclose the NTUC’s budget.

The research agenda may be set by NTUC or any of the members.

“We come to some consensus on how we can frame it,” said Tay. “We want to benefit workers… so if there are things that have some impact on workers, we will definitely want to partner and feature them and do those pieces.”

LAB members are not paid, and the role is voluntary. As members, they will be able to participate in a variety of projects, such as brown-bag sessions for labour movement leaders and workers, social dialogues with worker or employer groups and joint task forces.

Professor Lim Sun Sun from the Singapore Management University, one of the inaugural members, said partnerships with organisations such as NTUC help to ensure that universities are doing research that is meaningful and has a transformative impact on society.

Prof Lim’s research interest lies in the social impact of technology and the future of work, and one of the issues she has been studying is digital disruptions at the workplace.

There is a need, she said, to think about how to support workers and organisations at a time when people may feel unsettled by technological transformations.

“We find the possibility of working with the likes of NTUC, (which) really has good connections to companies, to be very helpful and valuable in terms of allowing us to broaden our research and its applicability,” she said.

As a “trusted mediator”, Prof Lim said, NTUC has helped researchers open doors to companies by allowing them access into organisations and making it easier for them to obtain data.

For the next three years, LAB will be focusing its efforts on four research themes: employment and productivity; labour in the global economy; health, safety and well-being at work; and emerging labour trends.

Separately, the labour movement also launched the third volume of Singapore Labour Journal. It features a range of topics including flexible work and technology adoption among small and medium enterprises.