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SINGAPORE: More employees filed claims for wages owed in 2019 compared to the previous year, according to the latest Labor Standards Report released on Thursday (November 19).
Total wage claims increased from 2.42 claims per 1,000 employees in 2018 to 2.68 claims in 2019.
It then fell to an annualized 2.46 in the first half of 2020, mainly due to fewer claims from foreign employees, according to the report.
Published by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM), the Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management (TADM) and the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (TAFEP), the report covered a period of one and a half years instead of one year to cover an outage period caused by COVID-19.
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CLAIMS AND WAGES RECOVERY
The number of wage claims from local and foreign employees increased from 2018 to 2019.
Among local employees, there were 1.53 wage claims per 1,000 workers, up from 1.43 in 2018. This was partly due to a weak performance of the industry’s wholesale and retail trade in that year, according to the report.
“Aside from basic salary, wage claim in lieu of notice was the most common claim item filed by local employees,” the report said.
“Wage claims in lieu of notification from local employees generally arise when termination of services is done verbally, without a written termination letter stating the last day of employment and notification of termination.”
For foreign employees, the number of wage claims increased from 4.45 in 2018 to 4.98 in 2019, in part due to more collective claims from foreign workers in the construction sector, which also performed weaker in 2019.
Between 2019 and the first half of 2020, while the number of wage claims increased for local employees due to the “economic shocks of COVID-19,” the number fell for foreign workers.
This is because TADM “proactively resolved” wage issues for foreign employees in the dormitories “rather than waiting for these to be filed as wage claims,” the report says.
Claims for basic salary and overtime pay were the most common cases among foreign employees, the report noted, adding that they generally stem from employers’ failure to maintain proper work hour records or computer errors in the overtime rates payable.
For wage claims filed between January 1, 2019 and June 30, 90 percent made a full recovery, while 4 percent of employees partially recovered their wages.
The total sum recovered was S $ 23 million. Most of the wage claims were concluded at TADM within two months, according to the report.
CLAIMS OF INCORRECT DISMISSAL
Layoff claims filed in the second quarter of this year were higher than in previous quarters, according to the report, adding that this is in line with the drop in local employment during this period.
“Despite the increase, there is no evidence that more employers are unfairly firing their employees to deny them the downsizing benefit,” the report said, adding that applications for downsizing benefits remained low at 69 in the second quarter.
“Many of the layoff claims in the second quarter of 2020 were filed by employees who were unhappy about the abrupt form of layoff, rather than breach of their contractual obligations.”
The report noted that since the Employment Law was amended in April 2019 to cover all employees, more than 300 managers and executives, or 23 percent of the 1,431 wrongful termination claims previously not covered by the Law have filed claims for wrongful termination.
The Employment Act was amended to extend basic rights and protection, including legal protection against wrongful dismissal, to all employees regardless of salary.
Previously, managers and executives who earned more than S $ 4,500 a month were excluded.
READ: Improvements to the Employment Act will see more workers protected
Of all the wrongful termination claims filed between April 1, 2019 and June 30, 277 claims were assessed to be substantiated: 60 percent of them were resolved at TADM, while 40 percent were referred to the Court. of Labor Claims.
There were 842 substantiated complaints, of which 60 percent were resolved at TADM, according to the report.
Seventy-two percent of layoff claims were concluded within two months.
To help employers verify and verify that their contract terms adhere to the Employment Law, authorities noted that they have developed a Key Terms of Employment Verification (KET) tool that is available on the MOM website.
MITIGATING THE IMPACT OF COVID-19
Noting that COVID-19 has created “unprecedented challenges” in Singapore’s employment landscape, the report said that MOM has implemented several initiatives in the first half of 2020 to help employers and employees cope with the impact of the pandemic. .
For example, employers with workers living in dormitories have to pay wages electronically.
All employers in the construction industry are required to submit monthly statements on the status of wage payments to their foreign employees.
Employers with 10 or more employees must also notify MOM of cost saving measures affecting employee wages to “ensure that pay cuts are reasonable and necessary.”
“Employers should not act unilaterally and use financial difficulties as an excuse for not paying wages while waiting for employees to continue working,” said TADM CEO Kandhavel Periyasamy.
“When disputes have occurred that employees and employers cannot resolve, TADM stands ready to help resolve them in a fair and amicable manner through our advisory and mediation services.”
