AL PLENARY | Lawmakers divided on Labour Law amendment

The Legislative Assembly passed the first reading of an amendment to the Labour Law yesterday, which will see an increase in the maximum compensation owed to employees who are dismissed without proper reason. However, clear division was apparent among lawmakers when discussing the bill. Some AL members, especially those from the labor sector, criticized the government for merely proposing a higher limit on the amount of maximum compensation without removing the limit altogether. Lawmakers representing the business sector, on the other hand, argued that the amendment will place additional pressure on enterprises.
The current Labour Law stipulates that employers must compensate employees when making them redundant without providing a proper reason. The “basic monthly salary” used to calculate the amount of the compensation is now MOP14,000. The amendment introduced to the AL yesterday seeks to increase the amount to MOP20,000, which means that the maximum compensation for people earning MOP14,000 per month or above will rise. The government also proposed to have the new maximum amount reviewed every two years.
However, the proposal failed to impress lawmakers from both the labor and business sectors, and has drawn criticism from both camps.
Kou Hoi In, a lawmaker indirectly elected by the business sector, claimed that the proposed new maximum is too high. He claimed that employers are the weaker party when it comes to employment contract termination, especially when employees actively seek dismissal by their employers. Kou also opposed the proposal to review the maximum limit every two years, asking whether the government would also review the other types of employee compensation regularly.
His colleague, indirectly elected AL member Chan Chak Mo, said that while he conceded that the proposed adjustment was “reasonable to a small extent”, the law, he believes, will have a significant impact on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). “If you raise the limit like this, it would not have affected the gaming corporations too much. But it is terrible for ordinary businesses. For example, some small noodles shops that have been open for decades may have to compensate up to MOP800,000 to their employees if they want to close for some reason,” he said.
Their comments, however, were refuted by the lawmakers from the labor sector. Kwan Tsui Hang said that the figure given by Chan Chak Mo was “absurd”, and said that Chan should not have casually given examples like this in the AL chamber.
She then argued in favor of the upward adjustment, saying that the compensation is what an employee is entitled to, and pointed out that there are already mechanisms to determine whether an employee deserves to be awarded the compensation. “People have to understand that this compensation is not an amount a worker wants to take from the pocket of their employer. It is a compensation where the initiating party is the employer, and [the case] has to go through the Labour Affairs Bureau or even the court before the compensation is awarded,” Kwan said.
Meanwhile, her colleague Lei Cheng I said that the labor sector has actually been asking the government to remove this basic monthly salary limit since the conception of the Labour Law, because she thinks it is unreasonable to place a limit on lawful compensation.
Now that the government has proposed to raise the limit, Lei has demanded that the officials justify the new proposed amount. She questioned the government’s explanation, which claimed that the adjustment has already considered the endurance of the business. “I think the government has to make sure not to mislead the public and clarify one issue – the compensation is not payable to all employees. Employers have to terminate the contract with employees without giving a reason – a situation where there is no choice for the employees – before they will pay the latter the compensation,” she said. “The government should not mislead the public into thinking that the adjustment of the limit means that all enterprises have to pay this amount to all their employees.”
Furthermore, all the law-
makers criticized the government for its failure to provide more data for them to analyze the impact of the bill on SMEs.
In response, Secretary for Economy and Finance Lionel Leong said that representatives from the business and labor sectors were divided when discussing the adjustment in the government’s Standing Committee for the Coordination of Social Affairs. He stressed that the administration had already considered various issues before proposing this amount.

ON THE LAWMAKERS AGENDA

PORTUGUESE LANGUAGE  Lau Veng Seng has asked the government to implement policies to improve the Portuguese proficiency of Macau residents. The lawmaker pointed out that the central government has assigned Macau the mission of being the platform for communication between China and Portuguese-speaking countries. Therefore, the Portuguese language is valuable to the MSAR in several aspects, including culture, economics and technology. Although the government has already rolled out some measures to promote Portuguese among residents, and the language is increasingly popular in Macau, the number of speakers of Portuguese in Macau is dropping, according to the lawmaker. Lau Veng Seng has thus called on the authorities to introduce the Portuguese language to students earlier in order to allow them to start language training sooner.

OLD NEIGHBORHOODS Wong Kit Cheng pointed out that the government has yet to reveal any information regarding the policy on old neighborhood revamps since the relevant bill was withdrawn in 2013. “Since the current Legislative Assembly started more than a year ago, the government still has not released any substantial information. Residents have been waiting and waiting but have got nothing in return. The government has also claimed that it will foster old neighborhood revamps through allowing land-swapping between old and new neighborhoods. However, half a year has passed and there is still no news on that,” she said.

PUBLIC HOUSING Lei Cheng I suggested that while the government claims that it is restricted by limited land resources in Macau, it has failed to swiftly deal with idle lands in the city. The lawmaker said that the government, in 2010, proposed a stronger approach to tackling idle lands by lawfully reclaiming them. However, she said that progress has been slow and had to wait until April 2012, when the Chief Executive finally announced that he had signed documents that would launch the procedures to declare the awarding of 10 lands void. Until now, the authorities have only finished 48 case analyses and have launched the award revocation procedures against only around 20 cases. This, she said, means that the residents will not see any results in the near future.

TRADITIONAL SHOPS Ma Chi Seng said that many traditional enterprises and shops in Macau are popular among tourists. However, some of them have been shuttered in recent years due to various reasons. In order to prevent these traditional shops from disappearing, the lawmaker proposed that the government implement a series of measures. He said that the authorities should first launch a survey to gather information on the current conditions of these traditional enterprises in order to understand their needs. After gathering the relevant information, Ma proposed that the government should draft and implement policies that help the survival and operation of these enterprises, as well as provide financial support and training to the enterprises. The lawmaker also believes that the authorities can encourage traditional enterprises to “industrialize” so that they can continue to develop in future.