What a difference 48 hours make in news reporting, when looking at the following news report extracted below from this Sunday Times, the slant of language and tone is completely different from the preceding article that led this thread.
In this Sunday's edition, the report seems to put the ALPA-S SIA Pilot Association in a bad spot, and meekly accepted their mistaken position of confronting SIA Management.
The tough, bullying language of SM LKY was kept in awe, and glorified as his playing the role of 'good cop and bad cop' - when it basically boils down to nothing by gangsterism across the negotiating table, with him thinking that he has all the Ace Cards; until the rude surprise of the silly mistakes of SIA Management.
Compared with the report of the clear defense put up by Capt Goh, who was individually targetted by SM LKY, nothing was mentioned in the same breadth as was reported and posted in the other thread - 'SIA Girl Letter' by Void Deck, dated 29 February 2004.http://www.sgforums.com/?action=thread_display&thread_id=71129SM's meeting with pilots: What happened at the Istana By Zuraidah Ibrahim 'You play straight with me, I play straight with you. You play ducks and drakes with me, I play ducks and drakes with you.' -- SM Lee Kuan Yew
AS THE guests stepped into the pristine hallways of the Istana last Thursday afternoon, it was clear from their expectant faces that they were not there on one of those routine diplomatic goodwill visits.
This was no courtesy call.
The 14 Singapore Airlines pilots - a carefully selected mix of unionists ousted from leadership last November and their successors - were first ushered into a drawing room.
Some sat armed with files. Others waited with folded arms. Eventually, they were shepherded up to the chandelier-draped Sheares Room. Several paused at the bottom of the stairs, staring curiously through glass doors into a roomful of journalists.
Upstairs, they were about to face the man who had served them a series of public rebukes over the past few months.
He was after 'the principals and the ringleaders' behind the ouster of the union leadership, he had said.
'If they play this game, there will be broken heads,' he said on another occasion.
'Think carefully,' he cautioned them later, suspecting that the pilots were on a collision course with management.
That Thursday afternoon, Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew began with an explanation.
'I decided to take up this issue since I've been involved with Singapore Airlines from the start,' he said.
In case the pilots needed reminding, he pointed out that it was he who had secured the pact for SIA's first and most lucrative route then to London. It was he who had asked for Changi to be built, despite expert studies favouring Paya Lebar. It was he who had seen the airline through its turbulent early years.
'So,' he said, 'I have no intention for it to go down'.
If the pilots had anticipated facing an uncompromising force, they were right.
But if they had feared that this determination would extend to siding completely with SIA's management, they were wrong.
Instead, he gave his word, several times, that SIA management would be put right.
'There will be no sacred cows,' he said, meaning this clearing of the way of past agreements and positions would probably apply equally to the union as it would to management.
In the two-hour exchange that followed, he also gave them a tutorial on industrial relations, what it meant to be an effective union, and the importance of non-confrontational, cooperative labour-management relations within Singapore's formula for success.
He came to power on the back of union support, he recounted to those in need of a history lesson. As a lawyer new to politics, he had done work for unions for free. His pro-union credentials were as unimpeachable as his pro-business record, he appeared to be saying.
But what he could not countenance was an adversarial relationship that could bring Singapore down.
Thus, he reasoned with the delegation, to win their minds rather than break their heads.
First, however, there was a reading of the riot act to one Captain Ryan Goh.
The master politician was at work.
You were the prime mover, were you not, behind the machinations to vote against the union leadership, he asked.
This, even though you were on the very council of the Air Line Pilots Association-Singapore (Alpa-S)?
That fateful ouster was what had brought the pilots that afternoon to the Istana.
Alpa-S - which guards jealously its status as an independent union that stays out of the tripartite loop - booted out its leaders after rueing the wage cuts that they had accepted and members had earlier endorsed.
The pilots agreed to the lower pay during the Sars outbreak when the airline was bleeding. But after it made a stunning turnaround a quarter later, a whispering campaign began about the union being weak. The larger battle ahead - negotiating a new collective agreement then in its last days - needed stronger stomachs, the sentiment went.
Reading from a file, Mr Lee pulled out the following facts about Captain Goh.
A Malaysian with permanent residence status here, he had accepted Australian PR in 2002, moved his wife and children to Perth, shipped his car and sold his flat.
You told someone from IE Singapore that the grass had stopped growing in Singapore, did you not, he asked.
He turned to one of the pilots and asked if he knew the Malaysian had bought a house in Australia and had this option to bail out.
No, the person answered.
'No?' repeated Mr Lee.
'That's deception, isn't it?' he asked Capt Goh.
The pilot in the hot seat tried to defend himself but it was too late. The line in the sand between him and the Singaporeans had been drawn for him.
'My daughter is still in school here,' he tried saying, adding this showed he still had roots in Singapore.
But wasn't that because she did not like school in Australia and came back, Mr Lee shot back calmly.
Silence.
The castigation, no doubt a tactic of divide-and-rule, also established a more significant point: It is not up to PRs or other foreigners to get into union matters and play around with decisions that affect the rest of Singaporeans.
Capt Goh had tried to undermine the interests of SIA and Singapore, he said. 'If Singapore goes down, you go down,' he told the Singaporeans across the table. 'He doesn't go down.'
With that out of the way, he laid out what he wanted to achieve out of the meeting: a fresh start.
'You play straight with me, I play straight with you. You play ducks and drakes with me, I play ducks and drakes with you,' he told them.
'Tell me whether we can cooperate.'
Yes, they could tell him one thing and act another way, but he was not interested in that.
'I don't hold you to blame for everything. Nor is the management responsible for all the things that have gone wrong. 'I want to create a new partnership of trust and cooperation, not confrontation,' he said.
The pilots needed to understand what was at stake. When members ousted their leaders, their actions jarred and suggested they were clueless about the environment they operated in: An economy on the remake trying to ease its cost pressures and an aviation industry that will be forever changed by the wringer it went through these last few years.
SIA did not need hostile industrial relations that would weigh it down at a time when the connectivity that the airline and Changi provided was facing intense competition. Without that connectivity that other parts of the economy were premised upon, Singapore would suffer.