Message

Greetings and Salam Madani.

Primarily, I wish to express how honoured I am to be given the opportunity to deliver this message.

Years ago, we faced great challenges but with unity and determination, we have achieved a lot of success. I would like to express my gratitude to all who have made a significant contribution to this success. But we still have a long way to go. There are new challenges that we need to face and new opportunities that we need to seize. For that, we need to be ready to work harder, together for the sake of the greater good. The Trade Union (Amendment) Bill 2023 which has been passed in Parliament is something that our unions have been waiting for, it will create a mature, progressive and healthy trade union to ensure that employee benefits can be enhanced. The amendment of this Act will also be able to increase the membership of trade unions as well as provide opportunities for 96% of the workforce in Malaysia who are still not unionized to become trade union members.

NUTEAIW as a national trade union welcomes this effort and will continue to take the opportunities available to strengthen the trade union movement in the country. Various efforts have been arranged and will be implemented in line to meet the requirements of this bill. I would also like to take this opportunity to call on you to take the spirit of the amendment of this act to continue the struggle by carrying out campaigns to enliven union members and organize every class of workers to form a union. With that, the workers' votes will be greater which will do a lot of good through the collective agreements that are produced. In the coming year, I look forward to seeing more collaborative initiatives and greater achievements. Let us continue our struggle with the spirit of unity and unwavering commitment. Thank you to all members for your continued support, Together, we will surely achieve even greater success.

Keep Fighting, You Will Prevail

MOHAMAD FAUZI BIN IBRAHIM

PRESIDENT

NUTEAIW

I am extremely honored to be given this opportunity one more time to deliver this message for the eleventh time for this Triennial General Meeting.

I want to express the trust demonstrated by members by electing me for one more time as the General Secretary for the eleventh time. I am proud to announce that our membership has surpassed ten thousand for the first time since the inception of the Union in 1971. The credit for this significant achievement goes to the Executive Council and our President Sdr. Mohamad Fauzi Bin Ibrahim for his concerted and dedicated approaches in organizing.

On behalf of the Executive Council of NUTEAIW, one of the class-orientated trade unions in Malaysia, we thank you for your trust and undivided support shown to the Executive Council. With my reelection as the General Secretary, I feel an ever greater responsibility towards the members and I commit to give my best efforts to the struggles for further strengthening of NUTEAIW and emancipation of our members from some greedy employers.

The recent amendments to the Trade Union Bill pending implementation, would give greater challenges and opportunities to the Union because the recent amendments to the TUA allow unions to organize workers outside the union scope as it is presently. But, the union needs to amend its current constitution, especially its scope of representation in future.

The Trade Union movement in the country is very concerned about the direction of the Industrial Courts in Malaysia, which is our forum to take up trade disputes / dismissal cases etc. Lately, the Industrial Court has handed down unbelievable awards and deviated from being a Court of Equity and Good Conscience, where possible these issues must be addressed immediately before they spread like cancer, and it is sad that a mechanism like the Industrial Court is going down this road and becoming more legalistic and forgetting that it has to decide cases without taking into account technicalities and legal forms. If the Industrial Court is seen as pro-employers, can we imagine what density of disaster it would bring to the poor workers?

In conclusion, academic research suggests that a unionized workplace provides higher wages and better benefits than non-unionized workers. Therefore, it is indeed for every member of the Union to recruit new members to our Union.