Employment (Amendment Of First Schedule) Order 2022

Introduction

On 12 August 2022, the much-anticipated Employment (Amendment of First Schedule) Order 20221 ("2022 Order") was gazetted and it will come into force with effect from 1 September 2022.

These amendments are far reaching as the scope of the Employment Act 1955 ("EA 1955") will now cover all employees, regardless of their monthly wages. There are, however, several exceptions that will be explained below.

Background

The EA 1955 was recently amended and was published in the Gazette on 10 May 2022² . The amendments will take effect from 1 September 2022. You may read the salient amendments to the EA 1955 in our earlier newsletter here.

However, one of the issues that arose was whether the parameters of the EA 1955 would be expanded to cover a larger scope of employees. Prior to the 2022 Order, the EA 1955 mainly applied to the following categories of employees: