Singapore's Employment Claims Tribunal Publishes Its First Decisions

For nearly a decade since the Employment Claims Tribunals (ECT) began hearing cases in 2017, its proceedings have been conducted in private, with no publicly available written judgments. Employers and employees had no way to see how the tribunal reasoned through disputes, what standards it applied, or how similar cases had been decided before.

That has now changed. Between May and July 2026, the first five first written grounds of decision ever published from the ECT were released. The move follows the Ministry of Manpower's September 2025 indication that, while ECT judgments need not be published by default, the courts would begin releasing selected decisions given the substantial body of case law that had quietly accumulated since the tribunal's establishment.

Together, the five decisions cover a broad range of everyday workplace issues, from wrongful dismissal and what counts as "just cause or excuse," unpaid overtime and the consequences of poor recordkeeping, retrenchment benefits, the vesting of employee share options, and retirement and re-employment obligations. Across all these decisions, two themes stand out, the ECT expects employers to follow fair processes and to keep proper records, and it is willing to draw adverse inferences and award compensation where those standards are not met.

The timing of these publications is no coincidence. The Workplace Fairness Act will soon expand the ECT's jurisdiction to hear discrimination claims of up to $250,000, a significant increase from its current limits. As the ECT’s profile and caseload grow, the standards set out in these first five decisions will likely inform how future claims are argued and decided.

For employers, publication also brings a new dimension of reputational exposure. While party names in these inaugural decisions have been redacted, that anonymity is not guaranteed in every case, and the level of factual detail in the judgments may make identification possible in practice. With the ECT's low barrier to entry (low filing fees, no need for legal representation, and a mandatory mediation process designed to be accessible to all employees), employers should expect that more claims will be brought and more decisions will be scrutinised publicly.

This makes it all the more important for employers to get their house in order now.