MOM says our story on wrongful dismissal was inaccurate – who is being inaccurate now?

On 16 December 2024, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) posted a statement on its website saying that our August 2024 story Wrongful dismissal, first of two July 2024 cases

contains several inaccurate claims and assertions regarding the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) and the Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management (TADM).

MOM added that

inaccurate claims risk undermining public trust and confidence in the dispute resolution process, which is a balanced and effective framework that protects both workers and employers.

We would dispute the characterisation of our article as inaccurate. Our story was based on direct interviews with the affected worker who shared with us his first-hand experiences interacting with officers at MOM and TADM. Tan, the worker, spoke of what he observed, what he was told, and his interpretation of what he was told. Public trust and confidence in a dispute resolution process does not come from thin-skinned defensiveness when persons who went through the process describe frankly their experiences. It comes from acknowledging shortcomings and correcting them.

For easy reference, we first quote the entire statement by MOM:

We now dissect MOM’s statement in detail. We first begin with a small detail. Whereas MOM wrote in its second paragraph:

TWC2 claimed that MOM’s customer service officer informed “Tan” (not his real name) that…

In fact, we had used Tan’s real name in the article and his face is visible in the header photo. Nowhere in our story did we say we were using a pseudonym. We don’t know how MOM thinks it’s a pseudonym.

In that same second paragraph, MOM wrote,

Our records show that our customer service officer had discussed the case with Tan, and advised him that it would be challenging to proceed with a wrongful dismissal claim without evidence.

What did we write in our story? We wrote: “The third issue was that of wrongful dismissal. TADM’s response to Tan was that since it was not obligatory for an employer to provide a reason for dismissal, Tan would have no case.” In effect, there’s hardly a difference between what MOM is now saying in its statement (based on their records) and what Tan told us (and we wrote into our story). In fact, Tan told us more than what MOM is now saying. Tan told us the reason why it would be difficult to pursue a wrongful dismissal case – a reason given to him by the TADM officer – which was that the law permitted wide discretion to employers. MOM is just putting the same in more flowery words:

“… it would be challenging to proceed…”

Tan clearly understood what that really meant – he was being advised that he had no case. Suggesting that our story was somehow inaccurate on this point is far-fetched.

Then a funny thing happens within MOM’s own rebuttal statement. It contradicts itself. In their fourth paragraph, it said:

TADM did not discourage him from pursuing the case. In fact, TADM engaged Tan on more than one occasion, and specifically offered to lodge his wrongful dismissal claims for him.

TADM did not discourage him? What does the earlier-cited “it would be challenging to proceed” signify, if not discouragement?

It’s true that Tan and TADM were in conversation a few times, and we grant that in the subsequent conversations, his TADM officer might well have said something along the lines of If you really want to file a wrongful dismissal claim, I will do it for you…. But that would not cure the earlier discouragement that Tan sensed from the TADM officer’s initial response.

Automation gone mad

Next, MOM wrote:

Additionally, TWC2 claimed that Tan was directed to use an online terminal to file his complaint at MOM and did not receive any further assistance. In fact, Tan was attended to by a customer service officer.

This is another example of TWC2 knowing more than MOM about the fine-grained details of what actually happened. Several people attended to Tan when he showed up at TWC2’s office the first time, and almost the first thing he told the several people who attended to him was this (as reported in our story):

Before he came to TWC2, Tan made an attempt to lodge a complaint at MOM. He found his way there, but the only attention he got was from somene who told him to use an online terminal to type in his complaint. He was at a total loss how to do that, and he left the premises without getting any other help or speaking to anyone else.

A little further on, we wrote:

We then asked him to make another visit to MOM, this time accompanied by a TWC2 volunteer, and they managed to speak to a human.

Tan made two visits to MOM. The first was unsuccessful; someone merely told him to use a terminal to register his complaint. We reckon that MOM, whose rebuttal appears to be based on a review of their records, has no knowledge of this first visit. Perhaps, this might be because whoever directed Tan to a self-service terminal made no record of his or her brief interaction with Tan. But that’s a far cry from accusing TWC2 of inaccurate reporting.

So, when MOM in its rebuttal said:

In fact, Tan was attended to by a customer service officer.

we believe MOM was was referring to Tan’s second visit which, in our story, we had written “and they managed to speak to a human.”

MOM’s accusation that our story was inaccurate is baseless. Not only have we been accurate, we provided more detail about the worker’s experience with officialdom than might be comfortable for some people. Do read our original story about Tan, the cook in a Hunanese restaurant, again.

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