This letter was originally published in TODAY on 7 December 2020. 

A recent report by the Ministry of Manpower, the Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management and the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (Tafep) revealed that 60 per cent more employers were investigated for discriminatory hiring practices in the first half of this year than in the same period last year.

The reported increase is unsurprising. Since the launch of the Association of Women for Action and Research’s (Aware) Workplace Harassment and Discrimination Advisory, 34 per cent (the largest category) of our cases have pertained to discriminatory practices, involving both job applicants and employees.

Discrimination can take many forms, both direct and indirect.

Seventy-one per cent of our discrimination cases came from employees facing pregnancy discrimination. Other common types of discrimination involved race and gender (9.6 per cent), family and caregiving responsibilities (5.5 per cent) as well as disability, age and religion.

Seeing that discrimination can manifest at any stage, from hiring to dismissal, efforts should extend to cases beyond the hiring stage. Yet, while the Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices cover what employers should do during performance evaluations and promotions, for instance, our cases show that these principles do not often bear out in those areas.

In the absence of legislation that enforces these principles, we have, time and again, seen employers circumventing these guidelines without any legal accountability.

What’s more, despite the increase in complaints seen by Tafep and Aware’s Workplace Harassment and Discrimination Advisory (in the first half of this year, we saw 81.8 per cent more discrimination-related calls, from employees and applicants, than in the same period last year), we believe discrimination remains under-reported in Singapore.

From our case management sessions, we know that many employees do not file complaints because of a lack of protections under the present non-legislative approach.

They fear Tafep will not keep their complaint confidential and their employers will retaliate when the complaint comes to light.

For example, a pregnant employee contacted us after her supervisor made snide remarks about her pregnancy “being an annual affair” and nitpicked about her work after she announced her pregnancy, despite the consistent quality of her work.

She previously received very positive reviews throughout the years she worked for the company.

Yet she declined to approach Tafep, in part because she feared employer retaliation.

Furthermore, the current penalties (curtailment of work-pass privileges for employers) do not provide a direct or legal remedy for victims of discrimination.

The Government has maintained that introducing anti-discrimination legislation could increase business costs and undermine economic competitiveness. But we observe that countries with anti-discrimination laws, such as the United States, Britain and the Netherlands, remain globally competitive.

With discrimination evidently a growing issue in the Singapore workforce, the present non-legislative approach clearly does not suffice.

We urge the Government to enact a Workplace Equality Act that would deter such cases in the first place. It will also ensure a legal remedy for dismissed workers and current employees, and hold employers legally accountable for their actions.

Mamta Melwani, Senior Executive

AWARE’s Workplace Harassment and Discriminatory Advisory (WHDA)