They have surpassed the 30,000 target that was set in synchrony with the Labour Movement (LM) 2011 vision. Union leaders and members of Building Construction and Timber Industries Employees’ Union (BATU) have good reasons to celebrate on their membership feat for this year.
The union now has 30,031 members in its care. It was a target set – efforts from the membership drivers that were ploughed in on this have now made successful achievements. Over the last five years, there has been an 82 per cent of growth in the ordinary branch membership and a 10 per cent rise in the general branch membership.
At this time, the union has successfully organised 54 new branches; seven of these new branches were organised through secret ballots. The root of this success can be attributed to the detailed planning of impactful membership strategies by the union’s membership committee. These strategies are reviewed and refined every month by the membership team at work.
Creating The 'Stickiness’ Factor
The union has expended much focus on roping in more members from this broad group of companies in these sectors - cleaning, facilities management and construction. These companies will need different strategies of organising as workers in these companies will have varying needs.
BATU’s outreach has been extended to low-wage workers, foreign workers and in more recent years, more extensively to Professionals, Managers, Executives and Technical People (PMETs). Executive Committee members keep in close touch with the ground and are constantly gathering feedback and sentiments from them.
These information bits have been useful in tailoring more apt training programmes and customising interest groups for members from all walks of life. For instance, a dialogue session in a world café style was organised by BATU for professionals in the facilities management sector to voice their views on their training needs and gaps.
Leaving No Stone Unturned
Many of BATU’s branches have multiple worksites. Hence, it naturally was tough work for branch officials taking care of these branches to keep in touch with the ground as they had to multiply their efforts to reach out to all workers, leaving no one out. But these challenges did not deter their efforts.
Leaders in the union’s Executive Committee took the lead in organising strategies and recruitment drives. The dedicated staff in the union also readily gave a hand. One example of all efforts that came together aggressively was organising Purechem Veolia Environmental Services Private Limited – a big branch with 18 worksites. It took about six months of planning, coordinating and hard work to reach out to all the workers, before the union won the secret ballot to achieve the mandate for unionisation.
Mohamed Hair is a key membership driver at BATU who has worked to win many secret ballots across the union’s sectors. During a typical organising campaign, he would go down to the same worksite many times to talk to the workers. This would enable the union officials to build a close relationship with the workers and by the time the secret ballot came, many of the workers would have become friends with the officials of BATU as they interact to get a better understanding of union membership and its benefits. They would then readily vote for the union in favour of organising.
These efforts will be ongoing in the upcoming year as BATU sets its eyes on bringing in more members into its fold.
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Awards Of Recognition |
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BATU has walked away with several awards from the Labour Movement as it bagged good membership growth in these five years. These are some to name: • 2008 - Highest Percentage Gross Increase and Merit Award • 2009 - U Breakthrough Award (for recruiting foreign workers) and Merit Award • 2011 - U Organising Award (for organising the most branches in the qualifying period - 16 branches in total) |
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“Over the past five years, BATU has worked hard to increase our membership. We have constantly come up with membership strategies to expand our pool of potential members and to improve retention of our existing members. It was not an easy journey because many of our companies have multi-worksites (one company even has 100 over worksites), thus reaching out to our potential and existing members is a huge challenge for us. BATU was able to achieve our LM2011 target of 30,000 members because we can work together as one towards our goal.”
Ling Ngee Hua, Building Construction and Timber Industries Union (BATU) General Secretary
