When Bangladeshi migrant worker Dawood (name changed) signed a piece of paper on his first day of employment, he had no idea that it would strip him of the right to claim double rate for all future rest days he would work.

Contract substitution

Making migrant workers sign contracts or agreements within their first week of work is highly suspicious behaviour by employers. Almost always, the new contracts contain terms inferior to what had been agreed upon prior to the worker accepting the job and journeying to Singapore, or they introduce new and onerous requirements such as a lower rate for rest day pay, that had not been discussed prior to employment.

Especially in the context of migrant labour where employers know full well that the new employees would almost surely have paid huge sums of money to recruiters to obtain their jobs and were therefore in no position to refuse to sign whatever is asked of them, the circumstances surrounding such new contracts or agreements are coercive.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) considers such substituted contracts to be direct indicators of forced labour or human trafficking.

Yet, as TWC2 has observed (including in Dawood’s case discussed here), Singapore courts recognise such contracts as valid in law. Singapore can therefore be accused of permitting forced labour.

For many migrant workers, working on rest days is a financial necessity to supplement their low monthly wages. While they might therefore welcome the chance to work those extra days (unless they are too exhausted from working through the week), it is almost never up to them whether they get to work on their rest days or not. The reason is that in most of the occupations that migrant workers are in, they work in teams. If their management decides that certain tasks have to be done through a rest day (typically Sunday), then the whole team will generally be needed. It’s not as if a lone worker can ask to work on the rest day or do any meaningful work by himself when the rest of the team have not been mobilised for that day.

In certain situations workers may work alone, for example, being the sole person running a coffee stall. Yet even in these situations, it the employer who decides whether the worker is to work that day or not, because it is the employer who decides whether the stall is open for business or not.

Yet, Singapore legislation allows a distinction between rest day work done at the request of the worker and rest day work done at the request of the employer. This distinction comes with different minimum rates of pay, which will be explained in greater detail below. It creates an incentive for employers to fudge the question of which party requested rest day work, so as to save payroll costs.

This issue recently led to a highly unsatisfactory ruling by the Employment Claims Tribunal (ECT), and it underscores an urgent need for legal reform.

Under the Employment Act, Singapore’s low-wage employees are entitled to a weekly rest day, which is typically Sunday. If they work on a rest day, their remuneration depends on who requested the work:

  • Section 37(2) – Single rate of pay if an employee works at their own request
  • Section 37(3) – Double rate of pay if an employee works at the employer’s request

In 2023, TWC2 highlighted the deep problems with these rules. First, the absence of any guidelines on what constitutes a “request” leaves the term open to wide interpretation. Second, the rationale underpinning these rules has grown outdated (See this article and this article). For nearly 60 years since the law was made, the rest day pay provisions have remained on the books, without any serious scrutiny.

Comparing two cases

Two recent cases from 2024 and 2026 involving almost identical rest day salary claims by two migrant construction workers provide us an opportunity to highlight the issue once again. In both cases, the employers refused to pay the double rate, arguing that the workers had themselves requested to work on rest days. That “request”,  the employers asserted, came in the form of a blanket agreement signed on their first day of employment.

Lutiz’s (name changed) claim for $780.40 was for the shortpayment of the rest day pay he should have been entitled to. His case was that the employer paid him only 1.2 times the daily rate for the 38 rest days he worked instead of the double rate, despite the fact that he worked them at the employer’s request.

In defending against Lutiz’s claim, the employer relied on a defence which was solely based on a clause in the employment contract signed two years prior, which stated:

Sundays and PH (Public Holiday) work only to be requested by employee, subject to work availability and management approval. Sunday and PH will be paid at 1.2 x basic rate….

The magistrate at the Employment Claims Tribunal rejected this argument and reasoned that the employer failed to prove Lutiz’s requests to work on Sundays. The employer could have produced corroborating evidence — such as testimony from a supervisor or HR staff — but had failed to do so. In the absence of such, the above blanket clause in the employment contract was insufficient to establish that the requests to work on 38 rest days had actually come from Lutiz.

The Respondent has adduced no evidence to substantiate its allegation that the work was performed pursuant to the Claimant’s own request. Its only basis for alleging that the work was performed pursuant to the Claimant’s request is the clause in the employment contract that states:

(Extract of the Rest day clause)

I am not satisfied that this constitutes evidence that shows that the work on the 38 rest days performed by the Claimant was at his own request.

The Respondent should have no difficulty adducing evidence that shows that the Claimant had requested for work on his rest days, for example, the Claimant’s
supervisor’s testimony or evidence from the Respondent’s HR personnel showing that the Claimant had requested to work on his rest days.

In the more recent case filed by Dawood, the claim (for $384) was for the shortpayment from 16.5 rest days. Dawood’s case was that the employer paid him only the single daily rate for the rest days he had worked at the employer’s request.

In defending against Dawood’s claim, the employer (not the same as Lutiz’s employer) submitted to the Tribunal an agreement signed by Dawood on his first day of employment, which read:

I am requesting company to make arrangement for me to work on a rest day or public holidays; the employer agrees to pay me according to my normal daily rate.

Notably, the document bore the company’s letterhead, indicating it was prepared by the employer rather than Dawood himself.

Contrary to the outcome in Lutiz’s case, the magistrate in Dawood’s case accepted this as proof of Dawood’s request to work on 16.5 rest days over the following ten months and dismissed the worker’s claim for a rest day salary shortfall. The magistrate provided a brief explanation as follows:

In view of this document, I am of the view that the claimant is entitle to his daily wage for working on rest days and not at 1.5 times* his daily wage. The amount has been settled fully by the respondent.

* We do not know why the magistrate referred to the 1.5x rate when Dawood’s claim was for a 2x rate.

Following the dismissal of his rest day claim, TWC2 helped Dawood apply for permission to appeal against the Tribunal order on the question of law:

Whether a general agreement made by an employee to request to work on rest days, and to be paid in accordance with section 37(2) of the Employment Act 1968 (“EA”), amounts to a valid “request” by the employee as contemplated under section 37(2) of the EA, or whether such general agreement should be treated as illegal and void under section 8 of the EA for being a term of a contract of service that is less favourable to the employee than the conditions of service prescribed by the EA.

Ultimately, the appeal to the High Court never got underway. Recognising the potentially high legal fees and costs of defending the Tribunal’s order, Dawood’s employer quickly stepped forward to pay the $384 shortfall as an out of court settlement.

Two similar agreements, different outcomes

Whilst the wording of the blanket agreements in these two cases differ slightly, both employers’ intentions were quite clear. By having their employees sign these agreements, they sought to rely on Section 37(2) to avoid paying double rate for all Sundays worked. Were the two opposite rulings on the blanket agreement because of the difference in wording, or because of the different judges?

This comparison raises an important question: what is the actual meaning of a “request” under Section 37(2)? Can a request be a single blanket statement in an agreement signed on the first day of employment and which will apply to all future Sundays, as the Magistrate in Dawood’s case seems to think? Or should a request be contemporaneous, genuine, and made for each specific Sunday?

If the answer is the former, what will prevent employers across the board from incorporating similar clauses into all employment contracts for all employees, thereby effectively negating the legislative intent of Section 37(3) which provides for a higher rate if the employer is the party who asks the employee to work on a rest day.

A related issue is the burden of proof. Once the worker establishes that he worked on a Sunday, should he, as the claimant, bear the burden of proving that the employer requested him to work? Or should the burden be shifted to the employer? As the Magistrate rightly noted in Lutiz’s case, the employer is in a much better position to prove who actually requested the work.

Whilst Dawood’s out-of-court settlement represented swift financial satisfaction for one worker, it left the broader legal loophole entirely intact — depriving the High Court the opportunity to clarify the rest day provisions and laying down a binding precedent for all low-wage employees and their employers.

The legal loophole highlighted by these two cases stems directly from an outdated or poorly conceptualised legal framework. The cleanest resolution would be an amendment to Section 37 that guarantees a double-rate premium for any rest day work. Until the law changes, these critical questions will remain dangerously unanswered. Instead of waiting for a low wage worker to challenge this loophole in a high-stakes showdown in the High Court of Singapore, Parliament must step in to modernise Section 37, mandating a flat double rate regardless of who requests the work. 

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