SINGAPORE, July 10 — The incidence of employment claims and appeals, mostly related to salaries and wrongful dismissal, lodged by local employees inched up from two reports made per 1,000 employees in 2019 to 2.17 last year.

Many came from workers in industries hardest hit by the circuit breaker period to combat Covid-19 last year, a report by the Ministry of Manpower (MoM) showed.

These pandemic-battered industries included accommodation and food services, information and communications, and construction.

On the other hand, disputes involving foreign workers declined significantly in the past year, with the number of employment claims and appeals lodged by foreign employees falling from 5.13 per 1,000 employees in 2019 to 3.61 last year.

Nevertheless, the incidence rate for disputes involving foreign workers was still higher than the rate for disputes filed by locals.

These figures were published by MoM and the Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management (TADM) in the latest employment standards report, which was released yesterday (July 9).

Overall, there were 8,697 employment claims and appeals lodged with the authorities last year.

Of these, close to three in five reports were lodged by local employees, while the rest were by foreign employees.

The vast majority of the cases involved salary and dismissal claims, said MoM and TADM.

Here are the key findings.

Salary disputes

The incidence rate of salary claims by local employees inched up to 1.61 per 1,000 local employees last year from 1.53 in 2019.

MoM and TADM said that the rate was higher in industries such as accommodation and food services, information and communications, and construction, some of which were hit badly by the circuit breaker from April to June last year.

The authorities are watching the figures closely and will deal with emerging issues when necessary, they added.

Meanwhile, the incidence rate for salary claims by foreign employees fell from 4.98 per 1,000 employees in 2019 to 3.47 last year.

MoM and TADM said the industries that attracted a higher number of claims were the arts, entertainment and recreation, accommodation and food services, and construction.

They added that the drop in salary disputes from foreign employees was in large part due to pre-emptive measures put in place to identify and address issues among the workers during the pandemic.

For instance, since May last year, MoM required all employers in the construction sector — which traditionally accounted for a large proportion of salary disputes — to submit monthly declarations on the status of salary payments to their foreign workers.

Reasons for salary disputes

The top four claims lodged for both local and foreign employees were:

Local employees

― Basic salary

― Salary-in-lieu of notice, a sum equivalent to the wage an employee would have earned during a required notice period, when the employee or employer ends the contract without waiting for the notice period to lapse

― Encashment of unconsumed annual leave

― Salary for overtime work

Foreign employees

― Basic salary

― Salary for overtime work

― Salary for work done on rest days and public holidays

― Salary-in-lieu of notice

MoM and TADM said that issues such as salary-in-lieu of notice and cashing out unconsumed annual leave arose because of disagreements between workers and employers on whether leave was taken during the circuit breaker period, and what salaries were payable during the period of business disruption.

Disputes over overtime work often occurred on account of the employers’ failure to maintain proper records of working hours or computational errors on the overtime rates payable.

Salary recovery

More than nine in 10 employees (92 per cent) fully recovered their salaries after lodging a report with TADM and the Employment Claims Tribunals.

MoM and TADM said that 5 per cent recovered their salaries partially, and most of these claims involved employers who could not make the full payment owing to financial difficulties.

The authorities provided help to this group, including through financial aid via a short-term relief fund for lower-wage employees or the migrant workers’ assistance fund.

The remaining 3 per cent of employees who did not recover their salaries were mostly high-income earners who did not qualify for any financial relief.

Employers who did not fully repay their employees had their work-pass privileges suspended, said MoM and TADM.

They added that less than 1 per cent of salary claims lodged last year involved employers who wilfully refused to make full payment of salary arrears despite having the means to do so.

Wrongful dismissal

Overall, wrongful dismissal claims remained low at 0.39 claims per 1,000 employees, said MOM and TADM. Among local employees, the rate was 0.5 claims per 1,000 workers, compared with 0.14 claims per 1,000 foreign workers.

The authorities said that there was a spike in wrongful dismissal claims in the second quarter of the year, with the incidence of such claims stabilising in the last two quarters of 2020.

They added that only about a quarter of these claims were assessed to be substantiated by TADM.

The rest of the unsubstantiated claims had arisen from disputes over work performance, poor communication between the two parties, or business restructuring due to the poor economy. ― TODAY