AECOR INNOVATION SDN BHD v 1. ) MD SHAHIDUL BAPARI 2. ) MD MOHATAB ALI 3. ) SHIFUL ISLAM 4. ) AHAMMAD ALI 5. ) MD YOUSUF ALI 6. ) JEWEL RANA 7. ) JUWEL MIA 8. ) MD MEHEDI HASAN 9. ) MOHAMMAD AKTER HOSSAIN RASEL 10. ) MD EMON KHAN 11. ) MOHAMMAD JAHIDUL 12. ) MD NASIM HOSEN 13. ) MD MASUD RANA

Case Significance

Holds that an employer's justifications for withholding foreign workers' wages — deferring work to permit issuance, alleged refusal to work, and deductions for advances or poor performance — were afterthoughts that could not displace an explicit contractual entitlement to payment from the date of arrival.

This High Court decision at Shah Alam is one of a series of wage appeals resolved together, in which the employer, Aecor Innovation Sdn Bhd, disputed determinations of the Assistant Director of Manpower that had allowed the wage claims of a group of foreign workers on 8 November 2024. The dispute turned on the point at which the workers' entitlement to wages arose and on the employer's asserted right to reduce what was payable. The employer advanced three main justifications: that it was entitled to put the workers to work before their work permits had been issued, that the workers had refused to work, and that deductions were warranted for advances and for poor performance. The Court found the contractual position clear — the workers were to be paid from the date of their arrival in Malaysia — and held that each of the employer's justifications was, in substance, an afterthought raised to defeat the workers' legitimate claims rather than a genuine contractual defence. It endorsed the labour authority's rejection of the idea that an employer may treat recruited foreign workers as a reserve of labour, engaging and paying them only for the days on which they are needed, describing that assumption as wholly mistaken given the terms on which such workers are brought into the country. The employer's complaint that the labour authority had failed to give due weight to its documentary evidence did not, in the Court's assessment, reveal any misapprehension justifying appellate intervention. The Court observed that the burden of justifying any reduction rested on the employer, and that bare assertions unsupported by cogent evidence could not defeat the wages the contracts secured; weighing the material as a whole, it was satisfied that the labour authority had reached a conclusion open to it on the evidence. The Court therefore declined to interfere with the awards and left the wages payable to the workers undisturbed.