KUALA LUMPUR – Industrial unions opening their doors to documented migrant workers will help strengthen collective bargaining efforts, effectively protecting them from exploitation, according to migrant labour rights activists.
There are 2.2 million documented migrant workers in Malaysia, and only about 50,000 (2.3%) of them are unionised, according to the Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC) in 2019.
Adrian Pereira of the North-South Initiative and Joseph Paul Maliamauv of Tenagantia said migrant workers should be allowed to join unions as permitted under the Trade Unions Act 1959.
Pereira told Scoop that treating migrant workers as equals in the workplace by making them union members helps create better industrial harmony in terms of obtaining a higher quality of collective bargaining that would help both migrant and local workers get higher wages, as well as improved workplace safety and social protection.
“The monitoring of the forced labour of migrants could be done more vigilantly by the trade unions.
“This means that early warning signs (of forced labour) could have been flagged and actions (can be) taken by trade unions.
“There would not be any space for exploitation and this would directly improve and increase our (Malaysia’s) competitive edge because we are not relying on forced labour or modern-day slavery to build the economy.”
Meanwhile, Maliamauv said having migrant workers join the industrial unions would make unions stronger in terms of membership size.
He told Scoop that when a union does not allow migrant workers to join, despite comprising half or a majority of the workforce, it would make the union less impactful and easily ignored by a company’s management.
“If you take the plantation industry for example, where at least 80% of the workers are migrant workers and you leave them out of the union, then it will become weak and ineffective.
“(This is) because the company can just tell you (workers) that they can say whatever they want but we (company) can do what we want because you are not operating from any positions of power.”
Despite having no legal barriers to joining unions, Pereria said documented workers faced restrictive provisions on union membership.
He added that some trade unions only allow Malaysians to be members, and these unions need to amend their constitutions to open up membership to migrant workers.
“There is also a certain degree of ‘corruption’ where companies and some trade unions have agreements where they would not allow (migrant workers to join unions) or they have achieved industrial harmony, indirectly blocking migrant workers from joining.”
Maliamauv agreed with Pereira and added that union-busting has scared off migrant workers as workers who are active in unions can be sacked and they could not afford the risk since job security is their priority.
“No management I have come across so far has been supportive or at least neutral in migrant workers joining the unions.” – July 10, 2024