SINGAPORE – Four months into her new job, Felicia, 39, felt she was being frozen out by her company’s leader.
Once warm and friendly, she started giving Felicia tasks with short deadlines, barely met her and nitpicked on work that Felicia, who wanted to be known only by her first name, found for herself.
Felicia began to suspect the company would move to terminate her job after she finished the project, which tapped her expertise in moving and setting up office spaces.
Sure enough, she was dismissed for poor performance shortly after her six-month mark at the firm, said the workplace specialist who has worked on around eight such moves over the last 12 years.
Her role covered office management and employee engagement.
A news report about a worker’s successful claim of wrongful dismissal, along with her friends’ urging, pushed Felicia, a union member, to file her case with the Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management (TADM) through NTUC.
The worker won the maximum $30,000 compensation as the magistrate found that she had been dismissed in a “sudden and unjustified” manner at the end of her six-month probation.
The magistrate said the employer had failed to justify its decision that the worker, an audit manager, had not passed probation.
Under the tripartite guidelines, where poor performance is cited as the reason for the dismissal, the employer bears the burden of proving it. The dismissal is considered wrongful if the employer is unable to do so.
This decision was revealed in one of 17 judgments the Employment Claims Tribunal (ECT) has released publicly to date in 2026 – its first set of publications since the tribunal was established in 2017.
The judgments clarify for employees and employers some of their responsibilities, and how the tripartite guidelines and laws interact and should be interpreted, employment lawyers told The Straits Times.
Felicia’s case did not go before the ECT as mediation with her company was successful. She eventually settled for three months of salary.
Workers like Felicia have become more aware that they can seek help through the release and news coverage of the judgments, lawyers said.
More broadly, the release has been significant and timely, as the judgments clarify some areas of employment law and practices ahead of the Workplace Fairness Act kicking in in 2027, they added.
The ECT’s role is set to expand as it will judge disputes under the landmark legislation, which was passed in 2025 and will protect workers from being discriminated against based on a set of protected characteristics such as age, nationality and sex.
The number of disputes TADM handled with union members has increased from 3,031 in 2021 to 4,396 in 2025. In 2025, 86% of these were successful. Figures from 2026 are not yet available.
NTUC assistant secretary-general and legal director Patrick Tay said the recent publications are mainly due to the need to provide clarity to both employers and employees on the principles that the ECT has been applying in its judgments.
He and NTUC have been lobbying for publication since 2018, he said.
Tay added that the judgments are “bellwethers” for issues that many employees face when they approach the unions or TADM for assistance.
He raised the example of judgment five, where a 63-year-old worker won two claims for wrongful dismissal and entitlement to an employment assistance payment after being dismissed three months after reaching the retirement age.
The worker won $26,350 when the judge ruled that the employer had breached its contract entitling the worker to two months’ notice or salary in lieu upon termination, as well as breached re-employment rules.
The other judgments deal with issues like terminating an employee for performance issues; constructive dismissal considering the employee’s health and safety; and maternity leave and protections, Tay said.
Constructive dismissal is when an employee resigns because the employer’s conduct left them no choice – the law treats such resignations as a dismissal.
Tay noted that across the judgments, the ECT consistently referred to tripartite guidelines on re-employment and wrongful dismissal.
These are guidelines, which are not legally binding, agreed on by the unions, employers and the Government that were implemented in 2024.
Sean Sim, a partner at law firm Dentons Rodyk, said together, the judgments show how the ECT interprets concepts such as “just cause or excuse”, proportionality and the burdens of evidence on employers and employees.
“Some of the reasoning goes beyond what is expressly set out in the tripartite guidelines, which is why the developing case law will need to be watched carefully,” he added.
They also clarify the minimum standards or practices expected of employers, said Matthew Teo, a director at legal firm Helmsman.
Their publication should support greater consistency by allowing tribunal magistrates and parties to see how similar issues have previously been analysed, said Kelley Wong, a senior associate at Morgan Lewis.
Jennifer Chih, a director at Nair, Jen & Tan, also cautioned that while much of the discussion so far has centred on cases where employees succeeded in their claims against employers, this does not mean that Singapore employment law has become more employee-friendly. “Each case turns on its own facts.”
It is important for employees to understand their own employment documents and to keep proper records of anything that may become relevant if a dispute arises, such as appraisals, warnings, and key communications with their employer, she said.
Felicia said the evidence she gathered was what gave her the confidence to file her case.
“When you start to sense something is wrong, you need to have enough evidence to be able to prove a point,” she said, though she warned against complaining at the first sign of trouble as problems should first be raised one-on-one.
While the judgments offer clarity on interpretation, Sim added that they should not be seen as rewriting the common law of employment in Singapore.
At common law, the starting point remains the employment contract and the parties’ contractual rights of termination, he said.
The main set of laws governing employment in Singapore, the Employment Act, is currently under review.
Morgan Lewis’ Wong said the clearest area to watch is retrenchment.
The Manpower Ministry has said the review is considering stronger support for retrenched workers, including whether stronger obligations on employers are warranted, she noted.
It is also considering whether the mandatory retrenchment-notification period should be brought forward, and how to provide clearer guidance on what constitutes a retrenchment.
These issues were debated extensively in Parliament in October after retrenchments spiked to 4,620 in the second quarter of 2026, the highest figure since the Covid-19 pandemic.
Preliminary numbers released on Oct 30 showed retrenchments for the third quarter remaining elevated at 4,800.
One judgment published in July dealt with this directly.
The ECT held that Section 45 of the Employment Act – which bars workers with less than two years’ service from receiving retrenchment benefits – does not give anyone else a legal right to them.
Such payouts are owed only where an employment contract or collective agreement provides for them, the tribunal said.
More broadly, the review is an opportunity to consider whether the Employment Act continues to draw the right boundaries between different categories of workers and protections, said Sim from Dentons Rodyk.
This could apply to workers like Felicia, who is now working at a friend’s firm.
She has been let go from two permanent roles around the six-month mark in recent years – a shift from the past, when she held jobs for three to five years.
Wary of going through the same process again, she now suggests a six-month contract during interviews as it seems to better fit her expertise in moving offices.
Sim said the nature of work has evolved considerably, and Singapore has already had to develop a separate statutory framework for platform workers, who are not treated as employees but receive specific protections under the Platform Workers Act.
“That illustrates the broader challenge of ensuring that employment protections keep pace with increasingly diverse working arrangements.”