In another exchange, an employer acknowledged that a worker’s salary for a given month did not match the
agreed terms, attributed the discrepancy to an internal calculation error rather than any intentional
overpayment, and corrected it only after the worker raised the issue directly.
4.7 Extreme Monitoring and Associated Health Harm
In multiple cases, operators worked under second-by-second performance monitoring, weekly public rankings
of individual results, and a single 30-minute break per shift. Health harms documented in signed client
records include severe insomnia, panic-type symptoms, hypertension (one worker recorded a blood pressure
reading of 156 with no prior history of hypertension), dizziness, tendonitis, clinically significant weight loss,
headaches, numbness in the fingers, and heart palpitations. Hospital specialists diagnosed these symptoms
as attributable to work-related stress and anxiety.
In yet another case, on an Uber-related support project, a team culture was reported in which a supervisor
openly called out individual agents’ mistakes on the floor while napping during shifts and avoiding substantive
work themselves. A project-specific “no phones on the floor” policy — from which managers were exempt —
asymmetrically restricted affected staff from documenting this conduct.
4.8 Misclassification as Independent Contractors to Strip Statutory Benefits
At one employer (Teleperformance Malaysia), a contractual structure was observed under which workers
performing standard customer-support duties — under company-set schedules, KPIs, and policies — are
engaged as “independent contractors.” Under this structure, workers expressly waive their entitlement to all
benefits normally granted to direct employees (health insurance, paid annual and sick leave, holiday pay,
travel expense reimbursement, and profit sharing) in exchange for a fixed monthly “service fee.” Contracts of
less than six months may be terminated on as little as two weeks’ notice. Despite the “independent
contractor” label, the scope-of-work clauses require workers to report to company premises, work
company-assigned shift schedules, and meet company-set KPIs — features generally associated with an
employment relationship rather than independent contracting.
4.9 Prolonged Denial of Access to Essential Work Tools
In a documented case, a worker’s personal social media account — which the employer required as a
primary work tool — was locked by the platform on the sixth day after arrival and remained inaccessible for
approximately 36 days. During this period, the worker was unable to use any of the work tools dependent on
that account, effectively nullifying the training and nesting (on-the-job training) period. Despite this, the worker
was marked as having passed every assessment, a result the worker themselves has questioned. The
employer’s response was limited to asking the worker to attempt to create new accounts (none of which
succeeded), and it ultimately stated that it could provide no further support.
This pattern differs from the monitoring and harassment categories described above. It describes a situation
in which an employer required a personal account for business purposes, was unable to resolve a
foreseeable platform-level problem, and nonetheless continued to require the worker to keep to training and
performance schedules as though normal tool access existed.
4.10 Undisclosed Shift Conditions and Contract Discrepancies
In a documented case, a worker who was told at interview that the role involved a three-shift rotation on a
monthly basis was instead assigned to the night shift (21:00–06:00) immediately upon arrival, and was
subsequently informed that the night shift would continue for at least three months, with any transition to day
shift contingent on the team leader’s assessment of operational readiness and on completing additional
training to a passing standard. None of this was disclosed at the time of hiring. The shift schedule also
included end times for which public transportation was unavailable, and a requirement of six consecutive
working days was imposed without advance notice.
At another employer, HR unilaterally set a worker’s resignation date one month earlier than requested, by
calculating a strict three-month notice period from the formal submission date — even though the worker had
consulted with HR and team management about the resignation timeline two months in advance. The notice
provisions in the employee handbook contained no indication that the period would be calculated on such a
strict day-count basis.
4.11 Supplementary Note: Similar Patterns in Neighboring Jurisdictions
While this report’s primary focus is Malaysia, supplementary documentation suggests that some of these
patterns are not confined to Malaysia alone. In one documented complaint, a Japanese-speaking worker
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