There should not be any discrimination in terms of wages between local and foreign workers, Human Resources minister Fong Chan Onn said today.

"In principle, our Employment Act and all our industrial relations acts do not differentiate between local and foreign workers in terms of payment and allowances," he said.

"We (the ministry) feel that should be the case," he added.

Fong was speaking to the media after witnessing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signing ceremony between the Multimedia University (MMU) and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) at the MMU campus in Cyberjaya.

Although Section 17 of the Industrial Relations Act 1967 states that all employees are covered by the collective agreement, even non-union members, it is widely acknowledged that most employers in Malaysia, systematically practice a discriminatory wage system for foreign workers.

Employers argue that these foreign workers, mostly low-skill labour from Indonesia and Bangladesh, are needed for the country's manufacturing, construction and agricultural sectors. It was claimed that these sectors were 'not favoured by Malaysians'.

Employer pressure

When asked by malaysiakini about the claims by some foreign workers that they were deterred from joining unions by their employers, Fong said that "in principle no one can deter the foreign workers from joining the unions".

The minister, however, did not elaborate on the action that the ministry would take against errant employers that prevent their foreign workers from joining workers' unions.

Last week, Construction Workers Union (CWU) executive secretary S Santhanasamy claimed that many foreign workers were reluctant to join trade unions due to pressure from their employers and immigration authorities.

Currently, CWU has only 2,565 registered members although there is an estimated 350,000 workers in the country's construction industry, 80 percent of whom are foreigners.