Introduction
Trade unions in Malaysia first emerged in the 1920s when
the Communist Party of Malaya encouraged unskilled workers to unionise. There
was no legislation then relating to trade unions in Malaysia. In 1940, a Trade
Unions Enactment was passed in the Federated Malay States, which was extended
throughout the Federation in 1946.The enactment made it necessary for all trade
unions to be registered. The current legislative instruments regulating trade
unions and trade union activities in Malaysia are the Trade Unions Act 1959
(TUA) and the Industrial Relations Act 1967 (IRA).The TUA regulates trade union
activities; the IRA regulates employer union relations.
All trade unions are required to register with the Director
General of Trade Unions (DGTU) within one month of formation. Registration is
not automatic, and the DGTU can refuse to register a trade union if it does not
meet the requirements of the TUA. Both employers and employees have the right to
form unions based on the same rules, but trade unions can only be unions of
employees or unions of employers and not a combination of both. The same rules
apply to federations of trade unions.
IS
THE UNIONS MOVEMENT IN MALAYSIA FREE?
In Malaysia,
even though workers have the right to form and join trade unions (Section 5 of
the Industrial Relations Act, 1967), their movements are carefully
monitored and controlled under various labour legislations.
Three major pieces of labour legislation—the Employment Act, 1955; the Trade
Unions Act, 1959 and the Industrial Relations Act, 1967 control
and regulate the activities of trade unions in Malaysia. These
regulations have been amended a number of times in response to current economic
and political changes with the primary objectives of encouraging
harmonious industrial relations and achieving the status of
an industrialized country by the year 2020.
Trade unions can be seen as important
instruments for protecting workers’ interests. Malaysia’s first Prime Minister,
Tunku Abdul Rahman, declared that the growth of healthy trade unionism “is
being encouraged by the Government to provide bargaining power to union members
for the ultimate purpose of safeguarding their interest and well-being” (Josey,
1958: 1). Yet, former Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir had declared that trade
unions were ‘superfluous’ (Mahathir, 1982:108), lacked strong involvement in
national development policy (Rasiah and von Hofmann, 1998) and were ‘meek and
conservative’ (Ramasamy, in Murugasu, 2000:2). With a large number of small
unions, the movement is highly fragmented, based on trades, occupations,
industries and establishments, and further separated on a regional basis, which
are, Peninsular Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak.
The legal and
institutional environment is not favorable to the development of a strong trade
union movement in Malaysia. The union movement is faced with a number of
challenges, notably from neoliberal policies and changing structures of
employment. Malaysian unions are generally small, fragmented and regional. This
is also due to the strict requirements of the Trade Union Act 1959.The
government has the absolute right to grant union registration or withhold it.
At the level of the workplace legislation restricts the subjects of bargaining
(transfers, promotions, layoffs, retrenchments and job assignments deemed outside
its scope), and the ability of unions to strike.
Severe
recessions in the mid-1980s and at the end of the 1990s have slowed the
expansion of the labor movement. From 1970 to 2000, on average, the union
membership growth rate showed a decreasing trend despite significant growth in
the number of registered trade unions and enlargement in waged employment (Said,
Zakaria and Said 2002). Malaysia followed import substitution industrialization
(ISI) strategy from 1957 to 1970, which aimed to fortify infrastructure and
rural sectors leaving industrialization to the private sector. During this
phase, as Kuruvilla and Arudsothy (1995) affirmed, the government severely
curbed the activities of trade unions so as to achieve economic growth. The
peak of state involvement during the 1970s represented an attempt to achieve a greater
degree of equal distribution in wealth among different ethnic groups, in
particular the majority Malays (relative to ethnic Chinese and Indians) who
were slightly behind in the terms of economic advancement.
The import
substitution industrialization (ISI) and export-oriented industrialization
(EOI)
strategies also led to rapid structural changes in the Malaysian
economy that altered the composition of labour
force and trade union membership. Employment rose in manufacturing and service
sectors while traditional sectors such as agriculture and mining declined
(Bhopal and Todd 2000). Similar trends seem to continue in
view of the fact that the average percentage of
employment recorded in agriculture, mining, manufacturing, construction and services
for the 2000 – 2009 period.
The government maintained a direct
legal vigilance and control over the labour movement so as to curb disruptions
on inflows of FDI, and to ensure steady growth and economic sustainability. Consequently,
workplace industrial relations under the EOI phase was less committed to
collective forms of representation and led to a gradual decline in trade union
density.
While facing the Asian economic and
financial crisis in 1997, Malaysia worked aggressively, in rhetoric at least,
towards a ‘knowledge-based’ economy as a course of action to achieve the status
of a newly industrialized country, which necessitates sturdy industrial harmony
via a tripartite labour system. The Employment Act 1955 (EA), Trade Unions Act 1959
(TUA) and the Industrial Relations Act 1967 (IRA) collectively form the basis
of the industrial relations (IR) system in Malaysia. However, the Malaysian
government continuously receives criticism regarding its longstanding IR and labour
laws which thus far have not been revised to accommodate the current economic
and workplace demands by employers (Aminuddin 2007; Anantaraman 1997; Ariffin,
1997; Arudsothy 1990; Arudsothy and Littler 1993). The Malaysian IR system has become
increasingly more restrictive than pluralistic based on a system of
state-employer domination, and repressive-confrontation rather than being accommodating
and co-operative (Sharma 1996).
Deficiencies in the democratization of
labor legislation have, apparently, been seen to have worked against the
achievement of collaborative workplace relations. Anantaraman (1997) and
Suhanah (2002) argue that Malaysian labor policies since the ISI phase,
encapsulated in relevant laws, menace co-operative IR as the government
attempts to create a fully industrialized country by 2020. The
IRA grants the director general absolute authority to determine the
classifications of employees. The IRA prohibits
the formation of unions in ‘pioneer industries’. Indeed the focal point of
criticism in labour studies is that the director general
accepted in-house unions (enterprise unions) to represent workers in the
electronics sector after unremitted pressure from international
bodies, but exercised arbitrary power to prevent
the formation of a national trade union in the electronics sector since it
embraces ‘pioneer status’ consistent with the
government’s pursuit of a low-cost export-oriented.
The Malaysian labor laws, to some
extent, seem to be more favorable to employers than unions or employees,
discouraging genuine employee participation in workplace decision-making at the
in-house or enterprise level. The IRA prohibits anti-trade union activity,
victimization and labour discrimination practices by employers against union
members and organizers, and trade unions have the constitutional rights to file
charges against any misconduct with the Ministry of Human Resources or the
Industrial Court. Nevertheless, Ramasamy (2000), Rasiah (1995), Jomo and Todd
(1994), Aminuddin (2003, 2007) and Ramasamy and Rowley (2008) confirm that
employer opposition to unionization is common in Malaysia, especially in the
private sector, but the government remains neutral on this issue. In addition,
the Malaysia Immigration Department strictly spells out conditions on foreign
work permits in a manner that bars foreign workers from joining trade unions (Wu
2006). Jomo and Todd (1994) allege that Malaysia has relied heavily on foreign
migrant labour in several industrial sectors since the 1980s, and that the
government and the employers of the firms involved in those sectors mutually
determined that this group of the labour force remained unorganized by
preventing them from joining a relevant trade union.
Conclusion
The movement
of trade has been influence by political system. There have been political factors
that vary between outright antagonism towards trade unions for political
reasons, on the one hand, and ambivalence and non-committal approaches, on the
other, which see trade unions as marginal to questions of economic regeneration
and change. These factors are extensive in Malaysia. However, within trade unions
exist in terms of strategy and understanding. Structural constraints appear to
have become internalized within trade unions constraining their revitalization
strategies. There are real issues of visibility within the workplace. These are
partly explained by the lack of systematic support offered by the legal system
and employers. Yet there is a real perception gap as far as workers are
concerned. In addition, there are indications that trade unions have not really
thought through or developed direct and more imaginative forms of
communication.
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