Immigrant Workers

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In this new era of globalization, the booming manufacturing industry is gradually shifting its production towards the countries in south-east Asia, namely Cambodia, Indonesia and Malaysia, attracted by the abundant supply of local manpower and low cost of operation. At the moment, Malaysia is estimated to have 2.2 million legal migrant workers in year 2015 (MTUC, 2015). According to Watanabe (2003), there is no doubt that Malaysia is one of the countries with a large number of foreign workers and that her economy is highly dependent on foreign workers. In order to curb with the huge demand from consumers and customers, most of the manufacturing companies in Penang, Malaysia, has resorted to hiring migrant workers in order temporary to solve labour shortages. According to Yaw (2002), policies that are assembled based on the concept of a short-term remedy for labour shortage problems will expose the failure on the part of policymakers to recognize the long term critical contribution of migrant workers. In Malaysia, migrant workers may renew their temporary working visa (PLKS) or work permit in short, up to 10 years. If the hired migrant workers are retained in…show more content…
On the other hand, Maher & Haan (2009) also mentioned that migrant workers are becoming an increasingly important part of the workforce within the global garment industry. The majority of local workforce in Penang does not seem to be attracted to work in the apparel manufacturing industry. This might be due to the preconception that they have - “those who work in the apparel or garment manufacturing industry has relatively low wages and poor working environment when compared to the other

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