25 November, 2010Sixteen active members of the newly formed Electronics Industry Employees Union (Southern Region) in Malaysia attended a two days IMF workshop on organizing and union building.
MALAYSIA: The Malaysian government, through legislative and bureaucratic interference has denied and deprived the more than 200,000 electronics workers their legitimate right to form a union, for almost four decades. The IMF had been at the forefront in supporting the formation of a single national union to cater for this sector. Despite all efforts the Malaysian government resisted the formation of a national union in this sector.
However, last year after a high level ILO delegation visit to the Ministry of Human Resources the Malaysian government relented and allowed the formation of regional unions. Thus far four regional unions to cater for this sector have been registered.
The IMF had a series of meetings with these unions and based on the outcome of a meeting attended by Assistant General Secretary Fernando Lopes, formulated a plan to assist these union to build their capacity to better serve their membership.
The first workshop was held on the November 20-21, 2010 in Skudai, Johor. Sixteen participants out of whom seven are women members of the EIEU (Southern Region) participated in this workshop, which acted as an "eye opener" for these union activists. The participants came from five newly organised factories.
Mohd. Salleh Ahmad, the local coordinator for this union, urged the participants to play active roles in developing this newly formed union. He thanked the IMF for assisting the union in union building activities and hoped that the union will gain strength over a period of time.
IMF Regional Representative P. Arunasalam said that the IMF would assist this union to become stronger in every aspect. He called on the leadership to focus on organizing, dues collection, leadership capacity building, administration and developing activities like collective bargaining so as to strengthen this union.
The participants felt encouraged and motivated to carry out active trade union work. They also formed organizing committees to actively carry out organizing in their localities where their factories are located.