By Shukry Rashid
For 56-year-old veteran Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) Senior Planning Executive Manogaaran Karuppiah, being a union leader came up as an opportunity to serve his fellow workers. With over 30 years of union experience under his belt, he was also recently awarded the Comrade of Labour award during this year’s May Day Dinner for his contributions to the Singapore Urban Redevelopment Authority Workers’ Union (SURAWU). Mr Manogaaran was nominated as an Executive Council (Exco) member in 1988 and was voted in as Vice-President till 2013. He now holds the title of SURAWU president.
NTUC This Week: How did you start your union journey?
Manogaaran Karuppiah: I joined URA in May 1981 and almost immediately joined SURAWU. I came to know the past Exco members personally, became friends with them, and then they approached me to join the union. I did not really see the need to join a union back then but the important thing was how I saw the Exco members were friends with all the workers and how strong the rapport was.
What challenges do you face as a SURAWU leader?
One of the challenges we are currently facing is the declining membership numbers due to natural attrition, especially retirements. The turnover rate of new members is very high as young members who join us tend to leave the organisation in three to four years’ time. It is a cycle that we have monitored, and we have to ensure that we remain relevant with a strong amount of members.
How important is the amount of SURAWU members, and what does the union do to recruit more?
It is very important because without members, we have no union. We must get as many workers to join as possible so that we can have a stronger voice. With more members, we can also get the chance to meet potential leaders. URA currently employs about 1,000 workers, with about 600 of them bargainable. To recruit new members, we hold two recruitment drives every year. Seeing the changing employment demographics, we also got NTUC’s PME Unit to help us with the drives in order to recruit more PMEs (Professionals, Managers and Executives). Besides planning to work further with PME Unit, we are also looking to see how we can value-add to our PME members by leveraging on the U Associate programme.
What fuels your passion for union work?
I have a drive to help people, especially the unfortunate ones. If we look at all the fingers on our hand, they are all of different lengths. Likewise, not all members are the same. Most workers can adapt to change and continue to perform well. But there are some who cannot, and need guidance to keep them going. Some of them are distressed and don’t know what to do and who to get help from, so I like helping these kinds of people.
What do you think makes a good union leader?
A good union leader obviously needs to have a strong voice for his or her workers. Besides that, a good leader also needs to know the needs of the organisation. The person must be able to bring the employer and employees together. It is important for a union leader to be a good mediator, understand both sides’ problems and needs, and maintain a good relationship between them.
Source: NTUC This Week
