Remember my post one and a half years ago about my friend making a claim against his employer and how difficult it was? Basically, a PMET with monthly basic salary of more than S$4,500 is not covered under the Singapore Employment Act and I was questioning the purpose of having a salary cap. In March 2018, amendments to the Singapore Employment Act have been proposed that will finally bring about positive changes to the state of labour protection here.
It’s not a secret that Singapore has one of the worst developed country labour protection laws. The labour market is weighted heavily to the benefit of employers and this comes at the detriment of employees. Key proposed changes to the Singapore Employment Act that will help to change this include:
- Removing the monthly salary cap of S$4,500 for an employee to be afforded protection under the Act; and
- Wrongful dismissal claims will soon be heard by the Employment Claims Tribunal instead of the Ministry of Manpower.
This is a step in the right direction and should come into effect by 1 April 2019. The problem with this is that it took the Singapore Government such a long time to realise the need for such changes and it’s still going to take a while more to implement them. Let’s not even go into further labour protection needed for vulnerable employees such as people with disabilities and women with caregiving responsibilities. It would be nice to see some level of urgency on this.
Anyway, the announcements came at an interesting time (more than a week ago). Main reason was that my wife got screwed in her contract negotiations and her employer didn’t backdate her higher salary for the past month despite her already doing the work. Essentially, my wife lost out on a month’s worth of higher pay and the main reason given by her employer is that the backdating can’t be done because of procedural issues.
It may not seem like much but it speaks volumes about how little recourse an employee can have when he/she gets screwed by the employer. This can happen to varying degrees and I can only imagine how much worse it can be if this is a more errant employer. Given the opportunity, the employer will almost always take advantage of the employee, especially when it knows there’s not much the employee can do. It is a function of human nature and the human condition. That’s why there are so many personal stories about employees being underpaid, discriminated against, etc.
Apparently as a Singapore citizen, my wife’s contract negotiations was already given priority but it still resulted in a failed outcome i.e. financial penalty in the form of lost wages. What would have happened if she was a Singapore PR or foreigner? My wife is lucky that her financial position allows her to absorb this financial cost and move on from this negative experience. But it definitely serves as a reminder that we can easily get screwed over in our jobs by our employers. Which is why the ability to move out of toxic work environments is so important and how personal finance management affords us that protection even if the law does not.
Am surprised that a bank would do that! says a lot about banks really…
It’s actually not that surprising when you think about the nature of a bank’s business and the type of people that work there. Haha.
had encountered situations where the staff would actually go out to ask for the deserved remuneration which the bank missed out on, and the bank would choose to pay as they do not want to run into reputation issues. So I am quite surprised.
Well, the problem is that the bank technically hasn’t done anything wrong, citing all sorts of delays with the approvals required. Which means that it’s difficult to force the bank to backdate when it has complied with its own HR policies.
I guess the sad thing is that many of us are still under the mercy of the employer rather than feeling empowered that we can do something about it. I will be very interested to see how this new act would materialize, and how the employers react to it.
Yup, an employee is always going to be at the mercy of the employer. Which is why I reckon these proposed changes will help to balance their bargaining positions.
Woah! I would not expect big bank/company to do that.
I actually think a big bank/company is just as likely to do something like that. The major problem is that their HR is more advanced and well developed in getting around issues like that in favour of the employer.
Sorry to hear about the lost month’s of income and the experience you guys went through. However if the HR dept is indeed is more advanced and developed, then working around procedural issues should not be such a problem?
If there is a written commitment for a certain pay to be a delivered on a certain date and the company is not keeping to that commitment, it certainly is a legal issue so best for your wife to re-engage with the HR team to understand the root cause versus just let it go like that.
That’s the thing, the HR dept can’t work around the procedures because it has complied with its own HR policies. You are right in saying there’s something that can be done here but the problem lies with the contract start date. Which in itself, should have been the legal commitment to pay the higher salary. But the bank can always move the contract start date around and make you sign it as long as you want the job.
That doesn’t sound right… if the contract has been signed with the effective start date (say 1st of the month), that should be binding. Amending the date on the contract requires both parties to sign off, which technically means your wife can choose not to sign. If there’s been undue pressure to do so, something you may wish to explore remediation on or at least ask the HR department what are the grounds for changing the terms of contract, in black/white.
The contract start date was never formalised i.e. the first date put on it was the non-backdated date. That’s the interesting part. Yes, my wife can choose not to sign, but it’s not like she can wait this out for a long time. Especially when it’s a new contract for a promotion. The organisation can always pull back its promotion or wait until you cave in.
Haha, I reckon HR departments exist to keep the company safe, not its people. Our takeaway from this experience is to trust HR departments less and be more active in ensuring formal processes are followed so we don’t get screwed in the end.
We have NTUC as union? It is staffed with top-notch politicians?
Haha, yeah, don’t think NTUC can do much when it comes to protection of employees rights.
There are always 2 (or more) sides to a coin or policy — the laissez faire labour laws & practices here enabled S’pore to attract trillions in investments, and accelerated development in industries, jobs, education etc. This was precisely the reason why the Old Guards allowed it and LKY touched on this a number of occasion in the press.
Those of us with heavy investments in S’pore (including property *wink*) and/or having jobs paying over $100K per year should be giving thanks to such laws! LOL! Many of us have indeed stepped on the shoulders (and heads) of both giants & the downtrodden to scale the heights.
If S’pore had adopted the more popular protectionist industrial & labour policies in the 1960s as our neighbouring countries, being a much smaller domestic market in a sea of fellow developing countries, we would have developed even slower than e.g. M’sia or Indo or Thai.
It’ll take some time as society & the economy upgrades for laws & policies to become more “equitable”, and having greater luxury for individual rights versus national expediency. UK took a thousand years for their labour laws to reach current state; US maybe about 100 years. Hopefully S’pore won’t take that long! 🙂
Agree with you that loose labour laws have allowed for the rapid development of Singapore. Yes, a vibrant job market definitely benefits the people. As you said, I reckon we can slowly tighten the labour laws to afford more protection of employees rights. But it’s time Singapore addresses the social problems that are arising as we become a developed country.