Ensure pay is banked, offer mobility

Ensure pay is banked, offer mobility

Sunday's report ("More foreign workers seek help over wage woes") mentioned that the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) will be making it mandatory for employers to issue itemised payslips next year. Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) will be glad to see this long-overdue requirement in place.

However, this is only half the solution. The other half that also needs to be made compulsory is payment through bank transfers.

This is because payslips only show how the salaries have been calculated. They do not show whether salaries were paid, or paid in full.

TWC2 regularly sees cases where workers report that their signatures have been forged on payment vouchers to make the documentation look like they had been paid.

Even countries in the Middle East, long accused of treating migrant workers badly, have made bank transfers compulsory.

Singapore's inaction is shameful by comparison.

Sunday's report also had an MOM spokesman advising workers with salary claims to seek help early.

Such "advice" will be fruitless unless MOM first addresses the structural inequities faced by foreign workers.

Any worker who lodges a complaint against his employer will almost surely lose his job.

The MOM does not allow workers to stay on to look for another job except in special cases, and even then, such workers, based on TWC2's documented cases, mostly do not land alternative jobs at all.

Partly, this is because the MOM gives them only two weeks to do so, simply too short a time. Moreover, lodging a complaint does not mean a worker gets his salary arrears paid to him.

The great majority of salary cases seen by TWC2 result in workers getting less than a third of what they are owed.

Workers know this. Lodging a complaint more than likely makes a worker's situation worse, not better. This explains why workers delay lodging complaints until they are desperately broke.

TWC2 has long proposed to the MOM that workers should be free to change jobs.

At the same time, curbs should be placed on employers hiring fresh workers from abroad, to give workers already here a better chance of securing alternative jobs.

This will also help retain skills and experience in Singapore. Giving workers job mobility, allowing them to quit and go elsewhere, is what will make employers think twice before holding back salaries.

It should also reduce the dispute-resolution workload at MOM.

Alex Au

Treasurer

Transient Workers Count Too


This article was first published on June 17, 2015.
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