News

The organizers in Rengo Packaging Malaysia have managed to organize 72% of the workers in only one year. The total number of workers in Rengo comes up to 484 (excluding foreign workers) and out of them there are 350 members today in RENGO Employees Union.

The organizers have been working really hard to inform the workers of their rights at the workplace and to organize them they had to meet them at the nearby coffee shop. Since they didn’t know who was working at Rengo they had to walk up to people wearing the same jacket or wests as themselves to find out if they were working at Rengo. Next week the organizers will claim recognition to become an official union of Rengo Packaging.

We met the organizers over a coffee at the same place where they usually meet and recruit members to the union. One of the organizers was Teh and he is 50 years old. For 20 years he has been working in the company without any sort of union. He is full of energy like the other organizers around the table, very excited over their success of going from zero members to 72% in one year. He told us “I joined the union so that the company will listen to our concerns. There are too many changes going on now and they won’t listen to our needs and rights, but we are more powerful as a union than we could ever be if we were standing one by one”.

Some of the changes concern the bonus and the transportation contribution. Now they have cut the bonuses to only two weeks pay and the transportation contribution has always been only RM1 per day which is unsufficient.

Andy Snoddy said: "This is very good news. I would like to thank the Malaysian Liaison Council for the good work they are doing and LOTCO for helping us fund this project".