TADM recovers S$5m in unpaid wages; eyes mandatory mediation for other disputes

BETWEEN April and September this year, 4,350 employees and 250 employers filed salary-related claims at the Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management (TADM).

Since it began operations six months ago, the TADM has completed mediation for 3,100 employees, with nine in 10 of them recovering their unpaid salaries in full, amounting to about S$5 million.

Having established TADM and the Employment Claims Tribunal (ECT) as the platform for resolving salary-related disputes, the tripartite partners are now looking to expand the scope of these organisations to include mandatory mediation of non-salary-related disputes.

This means that they would be able to hear salary-related and some types of non-salary related disputes from employees, whether or not they are covered by employment laws or under their contracts.

"In particular, we are looking at including disputes relating to wrongful dismissals of professionals, managers and executives (PMEs) who are not covered under the Employment Act. This is because such disputes have the most impact on the affected PMEs," said Manpower Minister Lim Swee Say.

Separately, the Tripartite Standard for Grievance Handling was also launched on Friday. This new standard specifies a set of actionable employment practices for companies to manage workplace grievances more effectively.

These include specifying who will hear appeals and the expected time for action to be taken, as well as giving employees the right to bring unresolved grievances to the next level, or request the union's assistance where applicable. Lastly, the new scheme also requires companies to train their employees to ensure that grievances can be resolved effectively and amicably.