Trade Unions in an elitist society: The Singapore story

In the Singapore model of industrial relations, the trade unions are said to be in a “special relationship” with the government. On the surface this special relationship looks suspiciously like the government exercises straightforward top-down corporatist control. This paper argues that despite being basically correct, such an understanding is overly simplistic because it ignores modest, but nevertheless real elements of inclusion. The paper focuses on the experience of the trade unions in the first half of the 1980s to argue this case, and to consider both the strengths and weaknesses of the Singapore system of corporatist trade unionism.