Articles > Facts, Research, Analysis
Our comments on MOM’s migrant worker survey 2024, part 2 (recruitment and retention)
A large number of employers in MOM's 2024 survey reported using recruitment channels strongly associated with excessive fees and kickbacks. Time to stop denying how dirty our recruitment landscape is.
Our comments on MOM’s migrant worker survey 2024, part 1 (skills and training)
Difficult to get workers with the needed skills, employers say. Look more closely, and we also see a huge reluctance to sponsor workers for training, or even to give them time off to do so.
Foreign workforce numbers 2024
We archive what little public data there is from the Ministry of Manpower regarding the numbers of migrant labour in Singapore for the six years up to 2024
Woolly “fully” – TADM’s 2024 report
TADM's annual report has useful numbers (but not enough of them), but it's frustrating to see them use language that obscures reality
Not good anywhere
A report looking at the laws (and gaps) impacting migrant workers in countries that are popular with Bangladeshi labour migrants. How do they compare with Singapore?
The rocky road to a transfer
Workers with salary claims would typically be in financial distress; they need to move into new jobs quickly without first having to go home. The COE letter is supposed to help them. Does it?
Fog and minefields
(Mis)information given to migrant workers before they decide to take up a job, inability to ask the right questions, reliance on agents can lay the ground for serious difficulties after they start work.
How compliant is Singapore with ILO Convention 29 on forced labour?
Sixty years after Singapore ratified the ILO's Forced Labour Convention 29, we can't help but see areas where Singapore can be accused of insufficient compliance. What are those areas?
Management executives washing dishes
In quick succession, many cases that looked like a new type of job scam surfaced. Agents and employers appear to be exploiting weaknesses in scrutiny and vetting in MOM's IPA process. Victims come to TWC2 one after another.
On the margins of marginal labour
A research report on the chronic livelihood distress faced by workers caught up in investigations by the Police and other agencies and the shortcomings of current systems.