AECOR INNOVATION SDN BHD v 1. ) MINHAZ 2. ) MD SATTAR ALI 3. ) MD LITON AHMED 4. ) MD MATU MIAH 5. ) MUBAROK MIAH 6. ) MD BAPPY 7. ) MD PABEL MIAH 8. ) MD RAKIB 9. ) MD MASUD RANA

Case Significance

Confirms that recruited foreign workers are entitled to wages from the date of their arrival in Malaysia under the express terms of their contracts, and rejects the treatment of such workers as an on-call labour reserve paid only for days actually worked.

This High Court decision at Shah Alam is one of a group of consolidated civil appeals heard together, in which the appellant employer, Aecor Innovation Sdn Bhd, challenged decisions of the Assistant Director of Manpower allowing wage claims brought by a group of foreign workers it had recruited. On 8 November 2024 the labour authority had allowed the workers' claims in full. The central question was when the workers became entitled to their wages: from the date of their arrival in Malaysia, as they contended, or only as and when they were placed with third parties for work, as the employer argued. The Court held that the terms of the workers' contracts were explicit — they were to be paid from the date of their arrival in Malaysia — and firmly rejected the employer's premise that recruited foreign workers could be treated as a standing reserve of labour to be paid only for the days on which they were actually called upon to work. The judgment records the labour authority's observation that the immigration framework for bringing in foreign workers assumes that employment, whether at a third party's premises under the employer's contract or at the employer's own premises, has already been arranged, and that the notion of maintaining workers as an on-call reserve paid only when needed is entirely mistaken. The employer's contentions — that it was entitled to put the workers to work before their permits issued, that the workers had refused to work, and that deductions were justified for advances — were treated as afterthoughts advanced to defeat the workers' legitimate claims. The workers had been recruited from abroad and were dependent on the wages the contracts promised, and the Court's conclusion gave effect to the plain bargain the parties had struck rather than to the employer's later reinterpretation of it. Finding no basis to disturb the labour authority's findings, the Court declined to interfere with the award of wages.