The Human Resources Ministry is apparently dragging its feet coming up with regulations to enforce the amendments to the Industrial Relations Act 1967(IRA) and the Trade Unions Act 1959 (TUC) which will protect interests of workers when forming unions in the country.

mtuc cawp water tariff pc 171006 g rajasekaran Malaysian Trade Union Congress (MTUC) secretary-general G Rajasekaran (left) told Malaysiakini today, that "after four years of pressing for the amendments to the Industrial Relations Act and Trade Union Act, the Human Resources Ministry has finally consented to the amendments which were made in Feb 2008."

"However, the ministry stated that it cannot enforce the amended law because it has not come up with the regulations for these two acts. It has now been 18 months and the ministry is not doing anything to speed up the process.

In fact, the situation now is worse than before the proposal of the amendments as the industrial relations officers of the ministry claim that they cannot enforce the amendments without getting the regulations," he lamented.

For the past 15 years, MTUC has been fighting an uphill battle urging the government to amend or scrap the IRA and TUC which was crippling the growth of unions in the country.

One thorny clause is section 9 of the IRA Act which is too cumbersome and has no time frame for the employers to recognise their proposed unions.

As a result of the long delay in getting recognition, many workers have become disillusioned in forming unions.

In 1997, Rajasekaran proposed a time-frame of a 30-day order of recognition be made if the government does not want to repeal section 9 but there were no reactions from the government to his proposal until the amendments were made to the labour laws last year.

Foreign workers barred from unions

"It is strange that on one hand the Human Resources Ministry welcomes the setting up of unions in the country, whereas on the other hand, under the guidelines of the work permits issued to foreigners by the Immigration Department, foreigners are barred from joining any unions in the country," he pointed out.

He claimed that there are two million legal foreign workers in the country without the rights to form unions to safeguard their interests.

"Only 10 percent of Malaysia's workforce of about 11.2 million have joined unions because the country's laws are designed in such a way that they are unfriendly and discourages workers from forming unions, especially the Trade Union Act 1959 and the Industrial Relation Act 1967," he said.

factory workers sweatshops 090107 clothing He pointed out that while Section 20(1) of IRA states that " A worker, irrespective of whether he is a member of a trade union or otherwise considers that he has been dismissed without just cause or excuse by his employer, he may make representations in writing to the director general to be reinstated in his former employment."

Section 20(6) of the act stipulates that the workman may represent himself or, if he is a member of a trade union of workmen, be represented by an officer of the union.

However, Section 20(7) of the same act states that neither workman nor employer shall be represented by an advocate, adviser, consultant or by any other person whatsoever.

He said that the intention of Section 20(7) is to protect the workers from restraining others from being misused and is designed to defeat that purpose.

To overcome these unfriendly labour laws, the MTUC has engaged the services of about 60 volunteers who are well-versed with the IRA, TUC and labour laws as Industrial Relations Officers (IRO) to assist workers who have problems with their management and who have been retrenched without just cause.

Unions protect workers and employers

The unionist explained that MTUC does not have the financial means to employ full time IROs and have to depend on volunteers to help them out.

MTUC handles about 200 labour dispute cases alone in Selangor every month.

Rajasekaran refuted the claim by the government that encouraging unions in the country will discourage foreign investments.

"In fact with unions, many investors have expanded their operations and have reaped huge profits.

Besides unions will also increase the productivity of workers and safeguard their welfare and interests", he reasoned.

The unions also help by ensuring that the government does not benefit from fly-by-night investors who fleece their workers in order to send their profits overseas.