It’s quite exasperating when we see the Human Resources Ministry’s half-hearted effort at amending the Malaysian Employment Act, despite promising otherwise.
The government said it would align the amendments “to comply with the international standards and practices as required by the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, the Malaysia-United States Labour Consistency Plan and the International Labour Organization”.
But, the Employment Amendment Bill 2021 falls short of its objectives. Let me explain.
The Bill has failed to expand the scope of the Employment Act to cover all workers irrespective of wage and occupation by failing to remove the RM2,000 threshold.
This means that workers who earn above the cut-off wage of RM2,000 would not be covered by the amended Employment Act.
When the draft for the proposed amendments were circulated in 2018, the threshold for wage was to be removed to effectively expand the scope of the Act to cover all workers regardless of wage level and type of occupation.
Based on the statistics published by the Department of Statistics Malaysia in the Salaries and Wages Survey Report Malaysia 2020, the median income of a wage earner in 2020 was RM2,062.
This implies that in 2020, out of the total 9.4 million wage earners in Malaysia, only roughly half of them (approximately 4.7 million) were protected by the Act.
What exacerbates the situation is the fact that we can expect more and more wage earners to be excluded from the Employment Act protection as their income grows and exceeds the RM2,000 threshold over time.
Curiously the Bill also simultaneously seeks to remove a number of provisions which stipulate that sexual harassment, and maternity protections are applicable to every employee including female employees regardless of wage levels.
Likewise, a provision that empowers the Director-General to investigate and make a decision on wage related disputes for workers earning up to RM 5000 per month is also proposed to be removed in the Bill.
This also raises other questions: would this mean that sexual harassment and maternity protection, which are currently applicable to every employee and female employees regardless of wage level will now be applicable only to those earning RM2,000.00 and less?
Would the right of workers to request for the Director-General’s investigation and decision in wage related disputes for workers earning up to RM5,000 per month also be lost?
Clearly, the Human Resources Ministry hasn’t thought through these issues carefully.
The current amendments have also failed to identify grounds for discrimination unlike the initial proposal, which included comprehensive language and identified specific grounds such as gender, religion, race, disability, marital status, pregnancy, language, and age.
These provisions have been removed from the Bill and replaced with a general provision empowering the Director-General to inquire into and decide on disputes relating to discrimination, and subsequently make an order.
With these shortcomings, the government needs to re-examine the amendments or it would make a mockery of the Bill’s initial objective of aligning the Employment Act with international labour standards.