Institute for Migrant Rights
Railway line at Cianjur station, c. 1890 · KITLV, CC BY 4.0

Migration Jurisprudence from the South › Malaysia

93 migrant workers left without jobs on arrival

High Court, Shah Alam (Malaysia) · Malaysia · 2024 · National court

Citation: [case number to be added]
Type of case: Private
Outcome: Decided for the migrant side

Question

Must an employer pay wages to migrant workers it brought to Malaysia but never gave work?

What the court decided

Yes. The High Court upheld a Labour Court award of more than RM760,000 in back pay to 93 workers.

In plain language

Ninety-three workers arrived in Malaysia in 2023 and found there were no jobs for them. The Labour Court ordered the employer to pay them, and the High Court agreed.

Dalam bahasa sederhana

Sembilan puluh tiga pekerja tiba di Malaysia pada 2023 dan ternyata tidak ada pekerjaan untuk mereka. Pengadilan Ketenagakerjaan memerintahkan majikan membayar, dan Pengadilan Tinggi setuju.

Pertanyaan: Apakah majikan wajib membayar upah pekerja migran yang didatangkannya ke Malaysia tetapi tidak diberi pekerjaan?

What happened afterwards

  • 2023: Workers arrive; no work given.
  • 2024: High Court upholds award.

Sources

Open this decision in the interactive collection (compare, filter, Indonesian view, downloads).

Cite as: Institute for Migrant Rights (2026), Migration Jurisprudence from the South, version 0.1, https://theimr.org/court-decisions/d/my-93-workers-2024/. This page summarizes a court decision for research and advocacy; it is not legal advice.

For researchers

This collection of decisions is built for empirical legal scholarship and socio-legal research on migration and the rights of migrant workers, as well as for advocacy.

The coded variables support statistical analysis in law: cross-national comparison, regression and event-history designs, and law and economics questions such as how recruitment fees, wage protection and limits on changing employer affect migrant workers. The data can be downloaded for replication.

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