STUC Organising Award winners: Breathing new life into Rosyth Royal Dockyard

Two Prospect reps from Rosyth Royal Dockyard, Daniel Connolly and David Foote, have been awarded the STUC Award for Organising at STUC Congress that was held in Dundee between 15-17 April.

David (left) and Daniel accepting their award at the STUC from Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf

The award, which recognises their achievements in promoting trade union membership and effective trade union representation, was presented to them onstage by Scotland’s First Minister, Humza Yousaf.

In 2020, Prospect’s Rosyth Royal Dockyard branch had about 580 members, but after the resignation of experienced reps from the branch committee and a period of declining membership prompted by redundancies, COVID-19 and a change in working practices, that number had fallen to a low of 420 just three years later.

Daniel, as branch chair, and David, as vice-chair, then took it upon themselves to reverse this trend and rejuvenate their branch.

They have since launched a successful recruitment drive to grow their membership to nearly 600 members and increased the number of reps from five to 20; they have improved the recruitment of graduates and young members too.

David is now also chair of the Babcock Neurodiversity Network and is actively working across the sector to demand better and more diverse recruitment.

Writing jointly for Prospect’s Defence Sector blog, Daniel and David wrote:

“Rather than focus on the challenges and issues which we could see, we set out a plan to engage the membership. Starting simply by going into all the different areas where our members worked and asking them their opinion on the union, how things had been in the past, if they had any current issues and how they felt the situation in the union could be improved.”

From listening to their members and colleagues they identified four main areas for improvement:

• General lack of communication: members often felt they voted on pay once a year and that was it, we needed to drum up engagement, comms and bring more value to our members.
• Lack of visible representation: members felt they didn’t know who their reps were, and the reps committee had taken a hit over the years, down to about 5 reps in total.
• There was a feeling the union didn’t back its members: we had to work on optics and carrying out the work members expected of us.
• Many members didn’t know what the union did outside of pay: we needed a lot more transparency in our actions and the roles of the reps, alongside the union’s outside activities.

David Foote (left) and Daniel Connolly

By focussing on those four areas, Daniel and David have taken a branch that was ‘essentially on ‘life-support’ to one that is now thriving and going from strength to strength; the members have gone from feeling disenfranchised to being engaged and enthusiastic.

The pair hope that by the end of 2024, they’ll have close to 700 members, something that was barely imaginable when they started their recruitment drive in April 2023.

Daniel and David have achieved all this despite Prospect being the only union that does not have a rep with 100% facilities time within the workplace.

So, what advice would the award-winning duo have to share with other Prospect branches hoping to replicate their success?

“Consistency is key. Say what you’re going to do and then make sure you do it well. This is key both with the reps committee and with the membership. Running the drop-ins and doing site walkarounds during “3 months free” events was really good to get the numbers up.

“You need to get out there and interact with your membership, hiding behind a desk simply doesn’t work. After you start hitting improvement targets, the situation snowballs. Inspire the membership and they will get behind you.”