Labor Law and Immigrants: Legal Impact to Minority

Abstract

The influx of immigrants into Malaysia has been extraordinary in recent years. Their contributions to the physical development of this country have most likely been underpaid, undermined, and manipulated by private employers. This paper analyzes the labor law in Malaysia that grants more authority and security to private employers than to workers and their well being. The provisions in the Employment Act of 1955 limit immigrant workers from being defined and protected under this law. This study is qualitative in nature and uses content analysis to address the legal limitations, and an exploratory interview conducted randomly with forty (40) legal Indonesian immigrants to get some insights from legal immigrants' perspectives. As a result, this paper shares finding on the provisions in labor law, the limits of statutory language and definitions, the ineffective enforcement, and the underpinning problems that continuously make immigrant workers a deprived minority.

Studies on Low-Skilled Migrant Workers in Malaysia in 2000-2018: A Literature Review

“…Similarly, researchers who focused more on exploring the subject of policy and management of migrant workers (e.g., Islam, 2012;Muniandy & Bonatti, 2014;Kaur, 2014) were prone to engage the qualitative design as well. Another cluster of researchers that took advantage of the qualitative design in their studies include Healy (2000), Crinis (2010), Le (2010), Bormann et al (2010), Kartini et al (2012), Sundra-Karean and Sharifah Suhana (2012), Nah (2012), and Mohd Safri and Salmie (2014) who examined issues of migrant workers from the legal and human rights perspectives. In contrast, driven by the goals to testify relationships as well as to measure the impacts of migrant workers on the economy, development and its indicators (e.g., productivity), whether at micro or macro levels, researchers like Lai (2005, 2014), Devadason (2009), Zaleha et al (2011), Rahmah and Ferayuliani (2014 and Hamzah et al (2012), collectively chose the quantitative design by specifically capitalizing on economic modeling techniques that were fed by secondary or time series data.…”

“…Azizah Kassim, 2014;Crinis, 2005Crinis, , 2010Devadason, 2009;Hamzah et al, 2012;Healy, 2000;Mohd Na'eim et al, 2014;Mohd Safri & Salmie, 2014;Normah et al, 2016;Nurul Azita et al, 2012;Rohaida et al, 2018;Zaleha et al, 2011). In addition to these two terms, there were also authors who used the terms such as "guest workers" (Kaur, 2012(Kaur, , 2014Le, 2010), "migrant labour" (Kaur, 2005;Liow, 2005), "immigrant workers" (Kartini et al, 2012), "immigrant labour" (Narayanan & Lai, 2005;Narayanan & Lai, 2014), and "foreign labor" (Rahmah & Ferayuliani, 2014).…”

“…From the legal perspectives, Kartini et al (2012) found that the labor law granted more authority to private employers than to low-skilled workers including their well-being. These researchers highly recommended that the government meet the world-class standard of employment conditions through provisions of a legal system that guarantees labor rights of low-skilled workers.…”

Migrant Workers in the Seaweed Sector in Sabah, Malaysia

“…However, the high number of migrant prisoners does not indicate that they were all involved in criminal activities; most workers were often arrested for not having documents. Also, evidence suggests that the migrant workers themselves felt insecure and threatened by the exploitative forces at large in society (Kassim, 2009; Migration Working Group, 2013; Talib et al, 2012; Child Rights Coalition Malaysia, 2012), and also because of the prevailing stereotype image created against them, irrespective of the sector within which they worked (Navallo, 2013). Brunt (2013, pp.…”

Transnational Social Work and Social Welfare

“…The abused victims commonly seek shelter and assistance from the Indonesian embassy. The media highlighted several forms of abuse including physical and mental abuse, rape and assault, non-payment for work performed, discrimination, ending of contracts without prior notice, contract renewal by force, insuffi cient compensation, strenuous workloads in several different places that deviate from the actual contract, the holding of passport and entry paperwork without consent, and life without medical insurance and sick leave (Talib et al 2012). Highly publicised maid-abuse cases have triggered anger among segments of Indonesian society.…”