First Instance judge, with two other appointees, to “fast-track”
dispute resolution. The jurisdiction of these committees
Training
includes the application of labour law and employment
Volunteers
contracts. Parties dissatis ed by a committee’s ruling can
WICA & medical
appeal to the Court of Appeal within 15 days.
While a websearch uncovers a fair amount of literature about
insurance
WICA validity
how the committees are supposed to work, there is far less
reporting on how they actually work, how effectve they are and
what are the real wait times for resolution.
Therefore it is not possible to attempt any comparison with
Singapore’s system that involves mediation overseen by the
Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management and adjudication by
the Employment Claims Tribunal.
Workers’ Support and Insurance Fund
Also established by law in 2018, the Workers’ Support and
Insurance Fund only became operational in 2020. Its purpose is
to pay workers what they are owed when they have won their
claims through the Labour Dispute Settlement Committees but
still remain unpaid because the employer has gone out of
business or been closed due to illegality. The Fund will later
seek to reclaim the payments from the employer and the money
so obtained will be added to the Fund’s resources.
At least, that’s the plan.
However, according to a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW)
(August 2020), out of fteen migrant workers interviewed by
HRW and who had taken their cases to Labour Dispute
Settlement Committees, fourteen were yet to be paid their dues,
through the fund or otherwise.
More crucially, the Fund needs to have a steady source of
revenue; it cannot depend on reclaiming payments from defunct
employers.
TWC2 has made similar proposals for Singapore over the years,
albeit under varying names. As far back as 2013, we proposed a
“Foreign Workers Assistance Fund” in Proposals submitted for
“second phase” employment legislation review to assist “workers
left high and dry because their employers have disappeared or
gone bankrupt.”
Work safety