SINGAPORE — With white-collar workers here feeling the heat from stiffer competition for jobs and promotions, among other things, labour movement chief Lim Swee Say said there is a “growing importance” to “do more and do better” to improve their lot.

To that end, he announced the setting up of two centres catering to Professionals, Managers and Executives (PMEs) who need legal help and career tips for work-related problems, among a range of other plans to meet the National Trades Union Congress’ (NTUC) eventual target of representing one in four PMEs in Singapore.

Several measures have been rolled out in recent years to mitigate the challenges facing professionals here, including a new requirement announced last month for employers to post job listings for two weeks before they can turn to foreigners.

Speaking at the NTUC Ordinary Delegates’ Conference on Tuesday, Mr Lim noted that some one-third of job seekers at the Employment and Employability Institute are PMEs.

With two-thirds of Singaporeans projected to be PMEs by 2030, he pledged to step up efforts to meet the needs of such workers. This includes protecting their rights and supporting their progression and placement chances.

The NTUC is also looking beyond the unionised sector and working on forming partnerships with more professional bodies, because many PMEs are members of these organisations.

Those who join the U Associate Programme can tap on the NTUC to help its members in work-related issues. The Singapore Human Resources Institute was the eighth such organisation to join the programme on Monday.

Mr Lim also highlighted that growing salaries of low-wage workers faster than that of the national median wage would be a priority for the NTUC. This will ensure that the income gap does not widen further, he added.

The way to do that, he said, is to move the whole industry to adopt the progressive wage model, “because at the end of the day, many of the challenges we talk about ... have to take place at the sector level, across the industry, not at the national level in general, but at the company level”.

“We believe this is the next wage model for our workers,” said Mr Lim.

The model sets out career ladders and pay benchmarks for low-wage sectors. Workers will earn more if they move up into better jobs after undergoing skills upgrading.

The NTUC plans to launch accreditation schemes for each sector to make progressive wage the norm for more than 100,000 low-wage earners.

The landscaping, cleaning and security sectors have been chosen as the priorities next year.

It will also be setting up a progressive wage model expert group to assist unions and companies to “range up” the minimum and maximum wage in tandem with skills and productivity.

While the unionisation rate has increased from one in five in 2002 to a quarter of workers last year, Mr Lim also said the aim is to have a third of the workforce, or one million workers, unionised by 2015. There are currently 785,000 union members.