Baktee
Union of Security Employees’ (USE) 13th General Convention of Delegates held on 13 July 2016 at Downtown East saw branch delegates elect a new executive council to lead the union in the upcoming four-year term. A total of 19 branch delegates contested for the 15 seats in the council.
The appointments of president, general secretary and general treasurer remained unchanged and are still held by Mr Hareenderpal Singh of Premier Security Co-operative, Mr Raymond Chin of Reachfield Security and Safety Management, and Ms Sivamani Taigrajan of Excellent Security and Safety Management respectively.
Prior to the convention, six seats in the executive council were vacant. These included the appointments of vice-president, now held by Mr Jason Chua of CBM Security, assistant general secretary, now held by Mr Ardi Amin of Spear Security Force, and assistant general treasurer, now held by Mr Louis Ng of Danmax Security Management.
“I am glad to see the executive council members returned to office and with additional new members, making a 15-man team. Together, this new council is placed in a strong position to continue to look after the interests of all workers in Singapore’s security sector,” said USE Executive Secretary Steve Tan.
Previous Achievements
Under the leadership of the previous executive council from 2012 to 2016, USE has made progress in areas such as increasing the wages of security officers, industrial relations, membership, and leadership.
Based on a wage survey conducted by the union in March 2016, the basic wages of security officers have risen to about $1,100 as many security officers are now being paid under the Progressive Wage Model (PWM), as compared to the median wage of $800 in 2012.
In industrial relations, the union achieved an increase of 70 per cent in the total number of collective agreements (CA) and memoranda of understanding (MOU), having signed 28 CAs and 55 MOUs between 2012 and 2016.
Meanwhile, the union’s membership numbers have also grown from 10,730 in 2012 to 13,516 today.
The union also said that its leadership development framework has led to the number of its union leaders double from 23 to 46.
Commenting as USE’s president, Mr Singh said: “Given the strong mandate many of the returning executive council members received, it shows the delegates understand that the executive council did its level best to increase membership, industrial relations protection, and overall bringing the union to a higher level in the last four years.”
Into the Future
Mr Singh also said that the new executive council plans to continue to further expand the five-tier PWM track beyond physical guarding by working with bigger unionised agencies to implement schemes similar to the Security Specialist Vocation Scheme launched with Soverus Group in June this year.
He added that there are plans to recommend to the Security Tripartite Cluster (STC) to include the yearly National Wages Council guidelines as a licensing condition for security agencies.
“If we do this, the STC won’t need to deliberate to include the NWC guidelines in security officers’ wages every year. We’d just have to let the NWC guidelines take its course and agencies will follow suit,” said Mr Singh.
