When workers have valid employment claims, the practice of issuing them with Change of Employer (COE) letters has become more or less standardised. But having such letters in hand is no guarantee that they ultimately get into new jobs. This study looks at that process of searching for a transfer job to better understand the barriers workers face.
Interviews were conducted with twenty migrant workers who had sought help from TWC2 to file salary claims, and who had been given COE letters as a result. The focus was to compare the experience of those who had successfully found new jobs through COE issued by TADM as well as those who had had no luck doing so. Some workers chose to involve agents – typically unlicensed ones, fellow Bangladeshi nationals operating in the shadows as job fixers – while others preferred to conduct the search using their own personal contacts. In-depth conversations were conducted to understand what these workers went through as well as their thought processes. The interview questions were structured to gain insights in order to compare a search journey involving agents and one where the worker tries to find a job opening on his own.
This is the second of three reports:
- Fog and minefields – pre-departure hazards faced by Bangladeshi migrant workers coming to Singapore;
- The rocky road to a transfer – experiences in looking for new jobs with Change of Employer letters in hand;
- Not good anywhere – laws and gaps affecting Bangladeshi workers in other major destination countries.
Although the issuance of COE letters has become more or less routine, officials’ discretion still bedevils the process. Some workers get COEs extended several times, others get only a short window of opportunity.
Workers who don’t have useful personal contacts have to depend on intermediaries, in most cases, Bangladeshi nationals operating as unlicensed job fixers. The Ministry of Manpower has a published list of licensed employment agencies, but workers generally are unaware of it; in any event, these agencies do not seem keen on workers’ business for reasons we can only speculate. Workers also end up having to pay significant amounts to these intermediaries if jobs materialise.
There is the added problem of reliability. Interviewees opined that these unlicensed agents are much less reliable. As one respondent put it, “Many agent(s) have, sister, but all alibaba one” – meaning that there are plenty of agents about, but they are untrustworthy and prone to deception.
Other workers have enough personal contacts to find their way to a new job; they do so without the need to engage with agents, licensed or unlicensed. However, their personal contacts often expect to be paid as well.
While intended to pave the way for workers to transfer into jobs, the COE letters themselves stigmatise the workers. Employers can deduce that a worker who has a COE letter would have been one who had filed a claim against a previous employer. Some employers may be sympathetic, but others may see the worker as too big for his boots.
The full report (eight pages, PDF) can be seen by clicking the icon at right.