recruitment

BMA Ambassador Scheme

Opinion, Organising

Emma Runswick

BMA ambassadors receive:
− £30 GiftPay vouchers for every new member
− 25% off your annual membership (if you recruit 6 new members)
− a new ambassador welcome pack
If you would like to become a BMA ambassador click below, send the email and we’ll do the rest.

BMA email 10th April

I’ve been a rep for 6 years and now sit on BMA Council, one of two medical student members. I have a trade union background before that, and have been busily recruiting and organising for the BMA since I joined medical school.

When I first heard about the ambassador scheme, I found it distasteful. I don’t require an incentive to recruit to our union. I have an ideological commitment to trade unionism – we have to fight together to win together. I encourage others to join because I think it is in their interest to do so. The scheme was set up by the commercially named Marketing Department 🤮 without consultation with representatives.

However, there are positives to the ambassador scheme. I joined because it gave me easy access to all the materials like leaflets, pens and the BMA tablecloth that I had previously been unable to get access to. I had been nicking these from the BMA staff at some events, but always rapidly ran out.

It also gave us a bigger say in what went ON the leaflets – we got the marketing team to come to Medical Students’ Committee as part of the ‘membership challenge’ 🤢 and we made changes – to promote the work of the union for both individual members who need help and members as a collective.

I used the Amazon voucher they gave me (it used to be amazon, no longer because of tax dodging and bad employment practices) to buy my BMA medical school branch a tripod and other equipment for recording and webcasting our events.

I use the ambassador scheme enough that they know I am recruiting, but I don’t use the ‘official link’ that gives me a voucher unless we know collectively what we are going to spend it on. I may use it again for leafleting for medical students about the new junior doctor contract, as at the moment it’s unclear what funding there will be for specifically penultimate and final years who have a vote.

I have encouraged other medical student representatives to join the scheme for these reasons, and most of Medical Students’ Committee are on the scheme. I hope that in time, the ambassador scheme will die out and become a basic and essential part of the rep’s role.

Ideally, there would be an easier way for medical student reps and activists to get access to materials, and I think it’s likely that my use of the scheme is the exception rather than the rule, but I reckon I’ve recruited ~60 members alone, and many more at designated events, where BMA send staff to support recruitment. I have gained £0 financially.

Organising 101: Recruitment

Opinion, Organising

This is based on the training Emma Runswick delivered for BMA Medical Student Representatives. It has some use for all of us, but the chosen examples may not fit your environment.

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My name is Emma and I’m a Trade Union Activist. As elected representatives, you are too.

Our job is to build the strength of the union, so we can achieve more for our members. As students, we also have another job – to prepare our members for the challenges of work, and encourage them to stand up for themselves and become representatives as doctors.

We get our power from numbers, from the density of our membership. Like herd immunity, we are all better protected the more of us that are members. A representative of 98% of a medical school’s students has more clout than a representative of 65% of students. We also draw strength from the activity and engagement of our members. Where members tell reps about problems, and are prepared to act together to solve them, we have levers available that don’t exist with a passive membership. When there is competition for representative roles, reps have to show they are effective and accountable. So when we think about organising, what we aim for is full union membership, with significant activism and engagement of the ‘lay’ (not rep) members.

To achieve that, we have to stop thinking about recruitment and retention as something done by adverts and freebies. Recruitment is not a one-step job, nor one conversation. A rep may have to have several conversations over months to recruit somebody. More conversations would be required to recruit a member into activity. Other conversations are required to retain members when things inevitably go wrong, or when members have joined for free in freshers’ week and have no idea what the union does. Organising is an ongoing and constant process, which we all have to engage in all the time.

To assist you, it may be useful to develop a script. Mine goes something like:

*Pick something relevant to them – for pre-clinical students, a good example is UKMLA; for clinical students, travel bursaries, UK Foundation Programme Office, disability adjustment in exams; for junior doctors, contracts and training; etc.

Recruitment is not just a job for freshers’ week and inductions, though you should go to these. Like recruits like – you will recruit members far better and far more usefully than most BMA staff, because you know what it is like and what they need. Recruitment is also for teaching, grand rounds, medical formals, lunchtime, coffee breaks, and general conversations. Ask final year students if they have their contract or rota, if they have checked it using the BMA tools, if they are a BMA member. Ask your colleagues what they think of UKMLA, how much travel has cost them this block, whatever. Slip it into conversation. TELL PEOPLE YOU ARE THE BMA REP. Wear your lanyard and badges.

Organising is essential if we want our union to be strong. We can all play a part in that.

You can get materials for recruitment – leaflets, free stuff – from https://www.bma.org.uk/about-us/how-we-work/local-representation/local-negotiating-committees/promotional-materials

You can also access rewards for recruitment by joining the Ambassador Scheme: https://www.bma.org.uk/membership/bma-ambassadors

Those wanting to be active can have a look at this https://www.bma.org.uk/about-us/get-involved/represent-and-volunteer

 

Addendum Issues:

Junior Doctors’ Contract: sympathise! They are right, we didn’t do as well as we would have wanted in that dispute. However, we took an organisation that hadn’t struck in 40 years on strike, and we won significant concessions. If you compare the initial contract ‘offer’ to the one imposed, you can see how effective striking and negotiating was. We weren’t prepared for an industrial dispute that big, and if we want to do better, we have to be more organised, and we have to be stronger. We need you to be a member, and then people like us can change the union so we never give up a mandate like that again.

Chris Day/whistle-blowing: nobody really knows what happened there, even Council members like those on the Broad Left. However, everybody now agrees that we do have whistleblowing protection if needed from detriment by our training provider. Now, we need to be acting to make sure nobody has to whistle-blow. We work in understaffed and unsafe environments, and if we want to improve those, we have to break the locum cap, campaign for visa restrictions to be removed, win better policies for cover and training, fight for better pay, and ensure better workforce planning. Those are all things your union does with and for you, and we are stronger if we have more members. On Chris Day specifically, hopefully there will be a frank conversation when his personal Employment Tribunal case is concluded about what happened and the role of the BMA.