Construction workers in Singapore refuse to work, demand
pay. (Photo courtesy of Andrew Loh)
The Chinese and
Indian men are desperate. They have not been paid for the last two
to three months. After a period of protracted and unsuccessful
attempts to get their employer to pay them their salaries, the
Chinese men finally decided to down tools about a month ago. The
Indian workers did so today, 18 December. Together there are about
40 workers or so who are refusing to start work.
They are the
workers of Sime Chong Construction Pte Ltd. The Chinese workers
have been working in Singapore for some four to five years, and
this is the first time that they have taken things into their own
hands. The men say they have been told by their employer that the
company has no money and thus could not pay them. "But the
construction project is still carrying on," one of the men says,
pointing to the ongoing construction of some HDB flats in Yishun
where they are located, and which the company is involved in.
Four of the 20-odd
Chinese men have decided to speak up. Each of them is owed a range
of between S$2,400 to S$5,600 in salaries.
They have also
approached the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) for help but to no avail
so far. "The Manpower Ministry says if the company doesn't want to
pay us, there is nothing it can do," one of the workers says. The
rest nodded their heads in agreement.
The men have been
given special passes (S-Pass) to stay in Singapore in order to
resolve their pay dispute. However, the passes are valid only until
the 26th of
December. When asked what they would do if their employer still
refuses to pay up, the men kept silent, unsure of their options.
They repeated that the MOM had told them even it would not be able
to do anything. What they face would be repatriation, without
having their owed salaries recovered, as has happened to other
workers in the past.
The ministry's
attitude, the men say, was also one of apparent disinterest. One of
the men says there was no response to his phone call when he tried
calling the ministry. Another time, one of the men tried calling
the ministry again but the official seemed impatient and only said
that MOM will speak to their employer and hung up the phone.
According to the
men, they approached the ministry twice — the first time on the
7th of November and
the second time on the 15th of November. The
26th of December, on
which date their S-Pass would expire, is effectively the deadline
which they have to recover their salaries. So, the men are
desperate.
One of them says
his wife has been quite ill back home in China and he has requested
to go home. But so far, there has been no response from his
employer. Another man has a medical condition which requires
surgery but he too has had his pleas ignored by his employer.
The Indian workers
have downed tools only today and are awaiting the employer's
response in the evening. They have been told by him that he will
pay them their salaries on the same day. The workers have been owed
two months' worth of salaries.
Such salary
disputes are not new, and workers downing tools or even going on
strike are happening more frequently in Singapore in recent times.
The recent SMRT strike, while not entirely similar to this one,
nonetheless tells a story of inadequate channels for resolution of
such disputes, the failure of these so-called "proper channels",
and the apparent lackadaisical attitude of ministry officials
towards such complaints by workers. But more importantly, the
disempowerment of the workers who are not only left to the mercy of
their employers but also at the hands of the MOM.
The Employment Act
is unequivocal about the offence of late payment or non-payment of
salaries.
21. —(1)
Salary earned by an employee under a contract of service, other
than additional payments for overtime work, shall be paid before
the expiry of the 7th day after the last day of the salary period
in respect of which the salary is payable.
(2) Additional
payments for overtime work shall be paid not later than 14 days
after the last day of the salary period during which the overtime
work was performed.
Yet, while there
are numerous cases of salary disputes reported to the MOM, only a
few of such offenders are prosecuted. In 2010, for example, there
were a reported 4,000 pay-related complaints by foreign workers
lodged with the ministry, but only four employers were prosecuted
for failure to pay salaries.
While the ministry
drags its feet on enforcement to make sure employers adhere to the
law, it is the workers who have to endure the situation the best
they could. Without any salaries paid to them for months, these
workers from Sime Chong have to depend on aid from a migrant
workers NGO which gives each of them S$30 a week for sustenance,
barely enough to keep their heads above water while they go through
the prolonged and uncertain process of trying to recover what
rightly belong to them.
It would be a
shame if these workers, who have held up their side of the
contract, are eventually forcefully repatriated without their
salaries being recovered — and through no fault of their own. For
they have gone through the "proper channels" which the Acting
Minister for Manpower recently spoke of. They have even approached
his ministry for help, in fact. But thus far, it doesn't look like
MOM is taking the matter as seriously as it should.
Will these workers
face the same fate as Nepalese worker Rana Kumar Rai did
last year? Rana was owed months' worth of salaries as well and he
had approached the MOM and even won a court order in his attempt to
recover his salary from his employer. But these were all to no
avail — and he was sent home empty-handed.
Let's not pay lip
service to protecting migrant workers, or in enforcing the law.
Indeed, the situation faced by these Chinese and Indian workers are
not new, as Alex Au — a volunteer with migrant NGO TWC2 — wrote
here last year: Neither law nor morality at
Manpower ministry.
If we are so quick
to lay down "zero tolerance" for actions taken by workers, as the
MOM did recently with regards to the SMRT workers' actions, then
perhaps we too should lay down in no uncertain terms a similar
"zero tolerance" for employers who flout the law, and who so
blatantly exploit their helpless workers. Failure to prosecute
these recalcitrant employers will only embolden others to do the
same.
But what is more
important than prosecuting employers is to recover the salaries
owed to the workers. They have put in their honest days of work,
they deserve their rightful salaries. There is no use prosecuting
employers if in the end the workers do not receive what is
rightfully theirs and are sent home empty-handed. We — the
government, the ministry and us — would be complicit in such
blatant exploitation of helpless workers.
Anything less than
a recovery of salaries for the workers would be an injustice, and a
mockery of all that the ministry has been saying these last few
weeks, following the SMRT strike. We would have learnt nothing.
