“Top Glove’s ‘Covid-19 heroes’ scheme ‘underpays’ gloves workers who toil 7 days a week”, 1 May 2020

Glove manufacturer Top Glove is “unethically” skirting labour laws by launching a scheme to get workers to work seven days a week on a “voluntary basis”, for a sum much lower than the standard wage, labour activists believe. The “Heroes for Covid-19” scheme set up earlier last month encouraged workers to spend up to four hours on their off days packing rubber gloves.

By right, employers must pay 1.5 times the normal hourly rate for off-day work…, [RM11.54 per hour] for…Top Glove’s foreign factory workers [in Malaysia] . Workers who participated [said]…they were only paid…RM8 per hour. “[D]eception is one of the indicators of forced labour”…, Adrian Pereira, North South Initiative.

…Top Glove said the hours put in for this scheme is not considered off-day work… [and said] that it is…ensuring…access to masks and hand sanitisers. Photographs of workers in the factory sighted by Malaysiakini show social distancing guidelines flouted. Workers…complained of…their hostels, where 24 men live in...a dormitory. The condition[s] worsened during the movement control order… as workers [were]…discourage[d] them from leaving the premises.