Pioneer union leader and former PAP MP Eric Cheong dies at 96

SINGAPORE - Eric Cheong, a pioneer union leader and 20-year Toa Payoh MP who helped set up NTUC's first supermarket in the town, died on July 15 at the age of 96.

He died of complications from dysphagia, or difficulty in swallowing.

Cheong represented Toa Payoh from 1968 to 1988 and sat on the NTUC's central committee - the labour movement's top leadership body. He also led the Singapore Manual and Mercantile Workers' Union (SMMWU), first as secretary-general and later as president.

His lifelong campaign for workers' rights began when he was working in his first job, said his son Peter Cheong, 67.

Speaking to The Straits Times at his father's wake at St Joseph's Church in Upper Bukit Timah, he said: "[My father] was a clerk, but he felt there was no representation. He didn't feel the equality there, so he wanted to step up."

This led the elder Cheong to join many of his peers in Singapore's pre-independence labour movement, said Peter Cheong.

He rose up the ranks to lead unions by his early 30s. But he was not always on the side of the ruling party - despite becoming a PAP MP and an ardent supporter later in life, Peter Cheong said.

In the early 1960s, Cheong was the general secretary of the Singapore Business Houses Employees' Union, which was linked to the opposition Barisan Sosialis.

In his oral history interviews housed at the National Archives of Singapore, Cheong described taking part in industrial action. He was arrested and held for two days in remand after an islandwide strike in 1963. He told ST in a 2011 interview it was this experience that made him realise these methods were not the way to help workers.

A year later, he led his branch of 500 and others in the union to leave the Singapore Association of Trade Unions, which supported Barisan Sosialis, to join the National Trades Union Congress, which supported the PAP.

Cheong joined the SMMWU and was later asked by founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew to stand for election. He told the PAP's newsletter, Petir, in a 2022 interview that he joined politics because it was an extension of his union work.

In his two decades as an MP in Toa Payoh, which was then a new town and one of Singapore's first Housing Board estates, Cheong's priorities were employment, housing and education.

In 1973, in response to rising prices, Cheong, as NTUC's secretary for cooperatives and business projects, helped set up a supermarket known as NTUC Welcome, following then PM Lee Kuan Yew's 1971 call for an alternative to profiteering retailers.

Cheong said in his oral history interviews that the supermarket bought directly from importers and sold at a high volume to keep prices low for residents.

He recalled that the store was so packed in its early days that staff shut the doors every few hours and that its prices forced the established supermarkets to hold theirs.

In 1983, Welcome merged with other union-run stores to form NTUC FairPrice.

He worked hard, his family said. "He was the first one into the office and the last to leave. He hardly took any vacations - the only holidays he took were when they sent him overseas for conferences," said Peter Cheong.

Senior PAP and NTUC figures paid tribute to Cheong on July 17, the first day of his wake.

Prime Minister Lawrence Wong visited the wake and in a Facebook post afterwards offered his condolences to Cheong's family.

Cheong never lost his energy or interest in Singapore, even after retiring from politics, he said.

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"Whenever we met, I was struck by how active he remained. Even in his 90s, he was still a regular at the Parliament gym - a reflection of the discipline and determination that characterised him throughout his life."

Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong, former Speaker of Parliament Tan Soo Khoon and former NTUC secretary-general and cabinet minister Lim Boon Heng also went to the wake on July 17.

Current union leaders cited Cheong's founding role in the early years of Singapore's labour movement.

In a Facebook post on July 17, SMMWU secretary-general Andy Lim said Cheong belonged to a generation that laid the union's foundations. It is now the largest union affiliated to NTUC and represents mainly commerce and service workers in the private sector.

"He devoted himself to improving workers' lives while helping build the trust and partnership between unions, employers and the Government that has become a hallmark of Singapore's tripartite model," said Andy Lim.

Labour chief Ng Chee Meng described Cheong as a stalwart of the labour movement who led with conviction and sincerity.

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"He believed unions must always uphold the highest standards of integrity and that lasting progress for workers comes from working constructively with the Government and employers, not through confrontation," Ng said on Facebook.

Peter Cheong said his father's conviction in Singapore's model of labour relations was founded on his belief in fairness. He said: "He understood it has to be balanced [between workers and employers]. If you have more on one side and less on the other, everybody loses out."

His devotion and diligence displayed at work extended to his home life, said his younger son Daniel Cheong, 56.

He was also a lifelong romantic, said Peter Cheong. After his mother, Nancy Saw, died in 2018, his father continued to visit her columbarium niche every Sunday and to speak to her portraits around the house. The couple had five children.

"When he walked to the dining table, he would look up at my mother's portrait and say, 'I love you, darling,'" said Peter Cheong. "Before he got into bed, he would pick up her photo and say it again. Three times, every time."

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This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.