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.