Singapore needs to do more to protect foreign workers, especially domestic workers

The ITUC is releasing today a report prepared for the World Trade Organisation’s trade policy review of Singapore that finds certain restrictions on the right to organise and a migration system that makes foreign workers vulnerable to abuses by employers.

Although the right to organise and collective bargaining are provided by law and they are exercised in practice, some restrictions apply, especially for migrant workers. For instance, a law bars any person “who is not a citizen of Singapore” from serving as a national or branch officer or being hired as an employee of a trade union unless prior written approval is received from the Minister of Manpower.

The law stipulates that foreign workers’ residence rights are pegged to their employment contract. For the 200,000 foreign domestic workers in Singapore, this means that if an employer cancels the employment contract, the worker is subject to deportation procedures. Some employers threaten foreign domestic workers with denouncing their employment contract in order to force them into long hours, restrict their movement and impose other illegal working conditions. Although the government prosecutes employers and recruiters who abuse labour rights of foreign workers, especially domestic workers, in 2010 there were some 4,000 foreign maids who reportedly ran away from their employers. Many foreign workers enter the country’s workforce immensely indebted and subsequently are coerced into jobs they did not accept on departing.

To read the report, please click here.