Legal Knowledge of Legislated Employment Rights: An Empirical Study

Authors: Hapriza Ashari, Nik Ahmad Kamal Nik Mahmod

Abstract:

This article aims to assess the level of basic knowledge of statutory employment rights at the workplace as prescribed by the Malaysian Employment Act 1955. The statutory employment rights comprises of a variety of individual employment rights such as protections of wages, statutory right to the general standard of working time, statutory right to rest day, public holidays, annual leave and sick leave as well as female employee’s statutory right to paid maternity leave. A field survey was carried out to collect data by using self-administered questionnaires from Human Resource (HR) practitioners in the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The results reveal that the level of basic knowledge of legislated employment rights varies between different types of statutory rights from high level to low level.

Keywords: Employment legislation, Human Resource (HR) practitioner, legal knowledge, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1088392

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