Malaysia is one of Asia's biggest employers of foreign labour. But recently, cases of deaths, abuse and forced labour have come to light. What is going on? Who is protecting these migrant workers?
Therefore, Fernandez could not complain that a provision requiring her to resign
when she got pregnant was discriminatory, the Federal Court ruled.
<p>In a written judgment made available yesterday after the Federal Court had
made the ruling in March, Justice Abdul Malek Ahmad gave the reasons for rejecting
Fernandez’s attempt to appeal to the Federal Court on a point of law. </p>
<p>"In this case, the collective agreement requires the resignation, or termination
in the event of refusal to resign, if a stewardess becomes pregnant and this
was a lawful contract between private parties. </p>
<p>"There is no definite special clause in the collective agreement that
discriminates against the applicant for any reason which will justify judicial
intervention," said Justice Abdul Malek. </p>
<p>He said that although Article 8 of the Constitution guaranteed no discrimination
against citizens on the ground of religion, race, descent, place of birth or
gender, the equal protection there extended only to persons in the same class.
</p>
<p>"Regardless of how we try to interpret Article 8, we could only come to
the conclusion that there was obviously no contravention," he said. </p>
<p>The judge said the job requirements of flight stewardesses were quite different
from that of women in other occupations including the other categories of women
employees in the same collective agreement. </p>
<p>"It is not difficult to understand why airlines cannot have pregnant stewardesses
working like other pregnant women employees. </p>
<p>"We take judicial notice that the nature of the job requires flight stewardesses
to work long hours and often flying across different time zones. They have to
do much walking on board flying aircraft. It is certainly not a conducive place
for pregnant women to be," he said. </p>
<p>In November 1991, Fernandez applied for leave from the High Court to seek a
declaration that various provisions in the CA dated May 3, 1988, were invalid
based on Article 8 of the Constitution and/or that her termination was void
because it contravened the Industrial Relations and Labour act 1955. </p>
<p>Fernandez, now 47, began working as a flight stewardess with MAS in 1980. She
had named MAS and the MAS Employees Union of Peninsular Malaysia as respondents.
</p>
<p>Her application was dismissed by the High Court in 1996 and by the Court of
Appeal in 2003.
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