17/03/2021 How did 5,000 salary claims a year become 1,400 over five years? – TWC2 about two to 6.5 months, compared with the 0.5 to 2 months for locals. Although the news story as a whole seemed to be reporting on the Employment Standards Report 2017-2018, your writer has not been able to nd mention of this in the original report itself, so it is unclear where Channel NewsAsia got its information. Success rate and restitution? The Employment Standards Reports do not present enough numbers about success rate and restitution, nor any split between local and foreign employees on this score. Instead, paragraph 9 on page 5 of the Employment Standards Report 2019-2020 says this: Of the salary claims lodged between 1 January 2019 and 30 June 2020, 90% of employees successfully recovered their salaries fully at TADM or the Employment Claims Tribunals (ECT). About half of the remaining employees partially recovered their salaries. The total recovered sum amounted to about $23 million. (emphasis added by TWC2) And still we have questions! Believe it or not, we don’t even know what “successfully recovered… fully” means. At TWC2, we come across many cases like these: 1. Reduction in claim amount under pressure Example: a worker has been shortpaid $8,000 under various headings (basic salary, overtime, public holiday pay, annual leave equivalent, unfair deductions, etc). At the TADM mediation stage, he comes under pressure to jettison parts of his claim because the evidence he has is not very strong (e.g. employer refused to produce time cards that would prove his claim). He is pressured to reduce his claim amount to, say, $4,100. A settlement twc2.org.sg/2021/03/08/how-did-5000-salary-claims-a-year-become-1400-over-five-years/?fbclid=IwAR3ndC6fHNpfjRFmcV9VKV2f4_D0-B5MyB… 6/8