She has been with the healthcare sector for 40 years.
Sixty-year-old Janet Khoo Beng Neo, a nurse clinician with the Singapore General Hospital, has been in the healthcare industry for 40 years.
On top of that, she been actively involved with the Healthcare Services Employees’ Union (HSEU) in the last 15 years . She is currently the union’s deputy general secretary.
She also chairs the union’s membership sub-committee and is proud of its 42,000 membership achievement.
NTUC This Week: What are some of the things you most enjoy in your union work?
Janet Khoo: In spite of my full time job as a nurse, what keeps me going is the teamwork, support and friendship given by the union leaders and the full time staff in HSEU. Listening to members concerns is an important area of any union work. At HSEU most of the grievances that members bring up revolve around instances of unfair treatment by their supervisors or about their appraisal system. Sometimes they do not understand the appraisal system and so when they approach the union our Industrial Relations Officers will explain to them what is involved. Some bring up concerns about their working hours. Recently, the announcement by the Health Ministry concerning restructuring of the healthcare clusters from six to three has also been raised concerns amongst members. HSEU has been having engagement sessions with them to assuage their worries.
What are some of the key areas that HSEU will be looking at for 2017?
A key priority is to have more activities for our union members to engage with the branch leaders. You can have many activities but not all members will take part. Another major area is reaching out to members, staying in touch with them and understanding their needs and concerns. We organise several in-house programmes to involve as many members as possible and to give them a chance to interact. HSEU is also focusing on leadership renewal, something that is needed not just at the executive committee level but also at the branch level. Although there is a large pool of potential leaders, it is not easy for them to make the sacrifices needed in union work with their full time jobs.
What have been some of the key milestones in your union journey with HSEU?
Much has been achieved by HSEU in the past few years. Our membership hit 40,000 in 2015. We have received the U Summit award for the past seven years. However, as our membership numbers grew, we faced another problem, outstanding arrears from membership dues. So, we launched a clean-up project for arrears. Recently, we managed to collect $22,000 in arrears from 160 members over the past six months. We contact those with more than three months arrears. We try to reach them at their workplace or send them a message to advice them of their dues. If there is no response from them after three reminders, a letter may be sent informing the member that his or her membership may be terminated if payment is still not received.
What is your wish for HSEU?
I hope that in future, all the smaller institutions like the private hospitals will come under one main union cluster under the healthcare sector . Currently, some of them belong to other unions. As one cluster union we can understand each other better as the problems we face are common ones.
Source: NTUC This Week
