Labor policy and administration

April marked the one-year anniversary since most countries in the world went into some form of lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19. The pandemic first and foremost has exposed gaps in current labour practices towards low-skilled transient (migrant) workers across Southeast Asia, particularly in Singapore, ...

Cambodian NGOs and trade unions called on Phnom Penh Wednesday to improve health and safety for workers in the country to combat its recent coronavirus outbreak, while the governments of neighboring Vietnam and Laos took precautions Wednesday to keep the virus from spreading within its ...

According to think tank, the Institute for Human Rights and Business, across Southeast Asia, an estimated 10 million migrant workers live and work in major destinations such as Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.  Malaysia is home to around two million documented migrant workers, comprising about 15 percent ...

Deputy Transport Minister Thaworn Senneam called for the appointment of a committee on safe labour mobility during the 24th Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Ministerial Conference held online on Wednesday. The meeting was also attended by GMS ministers from Cambodia, China, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. The ...

Cambodia’s Ministry of Labor on Thursday announced a new minimum wage of U.S. $192 per month for 2021, an increase of only U.S. $2 from this year, drawing criticism from workers struggling with inflation amid an economy devastated by the coronavirus pandemic. “Beginning on Jan. 1, 2021, garment ...

Employees who are members of their business’s social insurance scheme are eligible to receive financial assistance for temporary unemployment or loss of workdays during the COVID-19 lockdown. However, only members of business-related social insurance schemes will be able to receive compensation from the National Social Security ...

Migrant workers in Thailand who could not return to their home countries because of the COVID-19 lockdown have lost jobs and suffered financial hardship during the pandemic, but could soon see their outlook improve as the country starts to reopen. Thailand has long been a regional ...

The General Statistics Office (GSO) of Vietnam said on Friday an estimated five million workers and nearly 85 percent of companies in the country were negatively affected by the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in the first quarter of 2020. Turbulence was observed in the Vietnamese labor market in Q1 2020 and ...

Up to 30 Lao workers building a nearly completed railway project that will connect landlocked Laos with China say that they have not been paid in three to four months, because their Chinese employers left the area and went home early this year amid the ...

Shutdowns from the pandemic could trigger a tsunami of job losses in Thailand especially for employees who don’t have a regular salary, low-paid workers and people without a written contract. The Joint Standing Committee on Commerce, Industry and Banking (JSCCIB) says that as much as 7 ...