Spike in wrongful dismissal claims in Q2

There was a significant spike in wrongful dismissal claims in the second quarter of this year, in tandem with the dip in local employment during that period.

A total of 436 such claims were lodged under Section 14 of the Employment Act between April and June, compared with between 209 and 279 per quarter in the preceding four quarters, said a report on employment standards released yesterday by tripartite groups and the Ministry of Manpower (MOM).

Of the 436 claims, 277 were resolved by the Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management (TADM), while 139 claims were referred to the Employment Claims Tribunals for adjudication. The remaining 20 claims are pending mediation at TADM, said MOM.

Many of the claims were lodged by employees who were unhappy over the abrupt manner in which they were let go, due in part to restrictions on face-to-face meetings during the circuit breaker.

"There is no evidence that more employers terminated their employees unfairly to deny them of retrenchment benefit," said the report.

Observers have expressed concern about the possibility of more disguised retrenchments - when a company takes cost-cutting measures and retrenches employees with no intention of filling the vacancies, but calls it contractual termination.

There were 69 claims for retrenchment benefits lodged in the second quarter, which is low, said the report by MOM, TADM and the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (Tafep).

In all, 1,506 wrongful dismissal claims were lodged under the Employment Act and Child Development Co-Savings Act between April 1 last year and June 30 this year, including 75 by employees who said they had been dismissed during pregnancy. The total payment by employers to employees was $1.4 million.

About a quarter of the claims under Section 14 of the Employment Act that have been mediated by TADM were assessed to be substantiated. The rest were not.

A total of 333 dismissal claims lodged under Section 14 of the Employment Act were by managers and executives earning over $4,500 a month who have been newly covered under the Act since April 1 last year, when coverage of core provisions was extended to all employees.

Another 115 dismissal appeals were lodged under the Retirement and Re-employment Act and 65 were lodged under the Industrial Relations Act between April 1 last year and June 30 this year.

The incidence of salary claims among local employees has also been going up, said the report. Such claims could be for owed basic salary, overtime pay, salary in lieu of notice and maternity leave. The figure rose last year to 1.53 salary claims per 1,000 employees, up from 1.43 in 2018. In the first half of this year, it rose to 1.73 on an annualised basis.

The incidence of salary claims among foreign employees also rose last year, to 4.98 salary claims per 1,000 employees, up from 4.45 in 2018, partly due to more group claims among foreign construction workers.

But it decreased in the first half of this year to 3.96 on an annualised basis. With the workers quarantined at dormitories, TADM resolved salary issues that workers raised with Forward Assurance and Support Team officers so the workers did not have to lodge claims, said the report.

Of the 13,591 salary claims lodged between Jan 1 last year and June 30 this year, 90 per cent of employees fully recovered their salaries at TADM or the Employment Claims Tribunals.

About half of the remaining employees recovered part of the owed salaries. The amount recovered totals about $23 million over that period.

Yesterday, MOM also launched a new self-help Key Employment Terms Verification Tool on its website. Employees and employers can use it to check that their contractual terms on working hours and salary payments comply with the Employment Act.