After eleven years guiding Singapore's most delicate labor compact, Peter Seah has stepped back from the National Wages Council at 79, citing personal reasons — leaving behind a legacy of tripartite consensus forged through pandemic and economic uncertainty. His successor, Hsieh Fu Hua, steps in not as a stranger to the work but as a seasoned broker of competing interests, having shaped institutions from Temasek to the Singapore Exchange. The transition arrives at a moment of immediate consequence, with wage guidelines for the coming year due by October — a reminder that the machinery of socia