The Supreme Court has ruled that the Employee Welfare Fund must compensate 35 undocumented migrant workers regardless of their immigration status when their employer had refused to pay their wages.

The 35 workers were employed by a cleaning company subcontracted to a hospital in Chiang Mai. In 2020, the company refused to pay 38 of its workers their wages and compensation. Assisted by the Human Rights and Development Foundation, the workers filed a complaint against their employer. On 8 September 2020, a labour inspector in Chiang Mai ordered the company to pay the workers 1,097,620 baht in backpay and compensation.

The company still did not pay, so the workers requested compensation from the Employee Welfare Fund, a government fund which covers compensation for workers whose employer has not paid their wages or refused to pay their severance. However, the Fund committee approved the application of one Thai national, but rejected the applications of the remaining 37 workers, all of whom were migrants and stateless people, on the grounds that their work permits did not match their actual place of employment.

The workers filed a lawsuit with the Region 5 Labour Court, while ruled in 2022 that the Fund must compensate the workers, 35 of whom now remain in Thailand. The verdict was upheld by the Court of Appeal for Specialized Cases in October 2022.

Yesterday (5 August), the Supreme Court ruled to uphold the Labour Court’s verdict and ordered the Employee Welfare Fund to pay the workers 939,770 baht in compensation. The ruling was made on the grounds that limiting migrant workers’ rights based on their immigration status exceeds the Fund’s authority under the 1998 Labour Protection Act and goes against Thailand’s obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).

One of the workers said that they are happy to have won the case. Their employer had refused to pay for 45 days, the worker said, which meant that some workers could not pay rent or buy food, so they had to file their lawsuit.