Migrant workers’ vulnerability to exploitation in Macau

Despite the legal prohibition of recruitment agencies taking a share of the salaries of migrant workers for commission fees, in reality, wages of domestic workers, who are predominantly migrant workers, are deducted by the employers to pay the recruitment agencies to cover the commission fees. Migrant workers told authors of this submission that the recruitment agencies would charge two times their monthly salary. Very often domestic workers are paid only a few hundred Macau Patacas (less than one hundred CHF) in the first two months.

Household employers are also urging the Macau government to revise the law to require all domestic workers to live with them.[1] Such requirement, if imposed, would be detrimental to the health and well-being of domestic workers.

Furthermore, the Macau government expressly excluded domestic workers from the statutory minimum wage[2].

The Macau Research Group and the New Macau Association suggest the UN Human Rights Committee ask Macau, China whether it has proactively reached out to the community of migrant workers to receive complaints against unlawful employment/recruitment practices. We suggest the Committee ask Macau, China to clarify whether or not it plans to require domestic workers to live with the household employers.

This article is an excerpt from a human rights report on Macau jointly submitted by the Macau Research Group and the New Macau Association to the UN Human Rights Committee in 2020. See here for the full report.

[1] “意見盼修法加強監管,” Exmoo, 20 June 2019, https://www.exmoo.com/article/111955.html.

[2] Law no. 5/2020 “Minimum wage for workers,” art. 2.