Promoting
systemic change

ADVOCACY

Many of the difficulties faced by migrant workers in Singapore can be traced to the way they are recruited and the unequal bargaining power they have vis-a-vis their employers. Whilst some recruiters and employers adhere to the highest ethical standards, others exploit the power advantages they have over foreign workers who need work in Singapore when their home country does not offer sufficient opportunity.

Through TWC2’s high volume of casework, we have a good appreciation of their pain points and the ways in which recruiters and employers leverage their unequal power over them, resulting in persistent vulnerability throughout their employment period in Singapore.

This vulnerability manifests in common abuses such as these:

  • Huge sums of money required as a fee in order to get a job here

  • Job turns out to be different from the one promised

  • Salary turns out to be different from that which had been agreed during recruitment

  • Arbitrary deductions to salary

  • Failure to issue payslips or to provide accurate records of overtime hours

  • Blocking a worker from seeking another job in Singapore

Unethical recruiters and employers rely on the fact that once a worker had taken out a huge loan to pay the recruitment fee, the worker would not want to jeopardise the expensively-purchased job by speaking up against such abuses. They are thus reluctant to file complaints even when they are victimised.

Even when these abuses, such as misrepresentation at recruitment, unauthorised salary deductions and failure to provide payslips, are technically illegal, a system that relies on victims first filing complaints is necessarily inadequate in combating these ills. This shortcoming is compounded by weak enforcement even when complaints are filed.

For greater effectiveness, system reform is necessary to rebalance the bargaining power of migrant workers. A self-correcting ecology where workers do not have to rely on the government solving problems for them is a healthier and a more efficient system. For that to happen, two huge improvements are necessary: eliminating the cancer of recruitment fees, and a much greater freedom to resign and change jobs.

TWC2’s advocacy efforts are largely centred on these two aims, together with supporting objectives such as a right to receive accurate documentation. Learn more about what we do through these sub-pages: