The law currently protects the rich and powerful e.g. Insurance company like NTUC can simply refuse to settle claims by resorting to technicality or ambiguities and there is nothing an injured or insured person can do except to take out a law suit which may cause him thousands of dollars which he often is unable to do thereby being bullied by the powerful companies like NTUC Income.
Many employers too are taking advantage of the fact that the letters of appointments are written in such a manner that there is ambiguities in certain terms like salaries or entitlements or bonuses.
Unless an employee happens to come under the rare collective agreement cases or union cases normally an employee is at the mercy of his or her employer who could write contract of appointment in such a way as to avoid payments of benefits.
In normal contractual employment, an employer who deliberately fails to pay on agreed salaries or bonus could simply refuse to pay if he does not want to and could rely on contractual ambiguities if any to get away with payments depending on how he writes his contract.
This is the right of the employee in Singapore as the government here does not look after the interest of their employees as well as the employers who could then write his contract of employment with ambiguities to avoid payments of agreed salaries or bonus.
Many employers in Singapore could simply avoid payments by making payments subject to conditions which are unclear or ambiguous and let the employee sue if he want to claim payments he is entitled to.
To the government, the employers are more important than employees so it does not provide any help to administer such contracts and keep a neutral stand apart from providing minimum conditions like medical leave, workman compensation for certain type of employees, CPF or industrial arbitration cases for dealing with unions - not protecting unions (but for protecting employers).
The whole employment contract is heavily stacked against the employees.
If any employers want to penalize any employees like when the employees resign the employers could just refuse to pay agreed salaries or 13th month bonus and the employee will have to start his own legal action to recover such non-payment.
I wrote to the Minister in charge to complain about my employer's failure to pay agreed salaries and bonus in 2001 but received no reply.
So after receiving no help I had to start my own legal action to recover the salaries and bonus contracted to be paid. The lawyer representing my ex-employer deliberately interpreted the contracted payments against me even though on the written terms and fact the agreed salaries and bonus were payable but I had to defend my contractual rights all by myself without the help of any laws or the minister.
So an employee should be expected to go through the legal process to prove his case in a court of his rights like the Jonathan Lock vs Harnam case over non-payment of insurance claim. A rich and powerful employer could always refuse to pay the employee's agreed salaries or bonus and let him start his own legal action to recover the amounts incurring many thousands of dollars thereby deterring the employees to sue.
Thus the law as it stands now is against the employees for if he is bullied there is nothing he could do except to start an expensive legal action with no guarantee of justice because an employer's lawyer could almost fight on anything and give any clever excuses given in the unclear contract to deny employee to right.
A clever employer only need to write the contracted payments as subjected to certain condition which is hard to be determined so he could deprive employees of salaries or bonus as agreed salaries and bonus and the employer could not be penalised.
I won the case after two hearings in an out-of-court settlement but got nothing of the salaries or bonus because what I won I used it all to pay my legal fees.
This is how our world-class ministers are serving and looking after their citizens who are being bullied left and right by the powerful and rich errant employers.
The employers have the power to fire at will. This is a form of suppression of employees. ThereÂ’s no laws to protect the employees, no means for an employee to seek redress.
Another violation of human rightsÂ…hope ALL citizens who have to work for a living remember this in the next elections.