SBS Transit lawsuit: Ex-bus driver testifies about work hours, rostering system on first day of High Court trial

SINGAPORE: The civil trial of a former bus driver who is accusing SBS Transit of unfair work practices opened on Tuesday (Mar 22) with the plaintiff, Mr Chua Qwong Meng, taking the stand in the High Court.

Mr Chua was employed by SBS Transit from Apr 3, 2017 to Feb 5, 2020, earning a basic salary of S$2,110. He is the main plaintiff in the test case linked to 12 other drivers making similar claims against the public transport provider.

The case was allowed to be heard in the High Court after Justice Audrey Lim found in June last year that it raises important questions of law affecting a larger class of employees.

These include whether mandated rest days and limits to hours of work provided for in the Employment Act can be "overridden" when an employee is deemed to provide essential services, she said at the time.

The case would also have potential ramifications on how employment contracts are structured in terms of granting days off, computing overtime pay and determining working hours, she added then.

Tuesday's hearing via video conference was attended by several members of the public and media. It was initially scheduled for November last year, but Mr Chua discharged lawyer M Ravi from the case on the first day of trial.

Mr Chua is now represented by lawyer Lim Tean of Carson Law Chambers. The plaintiff is expected to subpoena Ms Anna Koh of the Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management (TADM) to provide evidence, according to the plaintiff's opening statement.

The Tripartite Alliance Limited later clarified with CNA that Ms Koh has never been employed by TADM, but is a former National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) advisory officer.

SBS Transit is represented by a team of lawyers led by Senior Counsel Davinder Singh.

The defendant is expected to lead evidence from SBS Transit's CEO Cheng Siak Kian, assistant vice president and head of scheduling Vincent Foong and assistant vice president in charge of human resources for bus operations Lee Swee Hua.

THE PLAINTIFF'S CASE

The plaintiff is claiming that SBS Transit breached its contractual obligations, the Employment Act and the company's own collective agreement with its employees in relation to working hours, overtime and rest days.

Mr Chua contended that SBS Transit failed to roster one rest day a week for him, and that there were several instances where he worked for seven consecutive days or more before having a day off.

This allegedly violated a provision in the Employment Act that "every employee must be allowed in each week a rest day without pay of one whole day". The Act defines a week as "a continuous period of seven days commencing at midnight on Sunday".

According to the plaintiff's opening statement, the case raises the question of whether the provision could be "potentially abused" by rostering workers such that their rest days fall on the first day and last day of a two-week period. This would mean working for 12 consecutive days in between.

This issue also has an impact on which of Mr Chua's work days should be considered rest days when calculating overtime pay, the plaintiff said.

On overtime, Mr Chua argued that he was underpaid for overtime work, and that there were discrepancies between his working hours as calculated by Ms Koh and as found in SBS Transit's official records.

The plaintiff said the case raises the question of whether rest and meal times should be factored into total working hours, and therefore impact how overtime hours are calculated.

Mr Chua further contended that he did more than 72 hours of overtime work in a month multiple times, exceeding the statutory limit under the Employment Act.

He also argued that "idle time" spent "waiting for employee transport" and "waiting at (SBS Transit's) premises so as to ensure that the buses leave (SBS Transit's) depot at precisely the scheduled time and no later" should be factored into his overtime hours.

THE DEFENDANT'S RESPONSE

Mr Chua's claims "are completely baseless" and "have no basis in fact or in law", said Mr Singh in the defendant's opening statement.

Broadly, the defendant's response was that most of Mr Chua's complaints were about SBS Transit's rostering and calculation methods, and that it would be the end of the matter if those methods were shown to be correct.

SBS Transit "more than complied" with provisions in the Employment Act that employees should not be required to work more than eight hours a day or more than 44 hours a week, argued the defendant.

Mr Chua was contractually obliged to work eight hours a day and six days a week, according to Mr Singh.

He contended that Mr Chua worked fewer than eight hours a day when his rest and meal times were excluded, but that he would be paid overtime pay starting from his eighth hour of work including rest and meal times.

He also argued that on a weekly basis, Mr Chua's working hours, less rest and meal times, never exceeded 43 hours and 30 minutes, and he was paid overtime for any additional hours worked.

SBS Transit also disagreed with Mr Chua that it had failed to factor his rest and meal times into his working hours.

It further questioned the authenticity and contents of handwritten documents Mr Chua used to calculate his working hours, saying it would be "unsafe" to rely on them.

On overtime pay, the defendant disagreed with Mr Chua on how a "built-in overtime" payment was factored into the calculation of bus captains' salary.

"SBS Transit was obliged under the Employment Act and the contract to pay for overtime at a rate of not less than one-and-a-half times the employee's hourly basic rate of pay", and did "exactly that", the defendant argued.

On rostering of rest days, the defendant said a "plain reading" of the provision in the Employment Act was that an employee shall be allowed one rest day a week on a day the employer may determine "from time to time".

The defendant said SBS Transit rotates bus captains' one rest day a week from Monday to Sunday in cycles of seven weeks. Every seven weeks, bus captains enjoy two consecutive rest days spanning the end of the last cycle and the start of the new one.

It also said the company has a safeguard programmed into its automated rostering system that issues an alert when a bus captain does not have a rest day in a week.

"Finally, where Mr Chua worked on rest days, that was only because he either asked to do so, and SBS Transit agreed, or SBS Transit asked him, and he agreed," said the defendant.

Bus captains who worked on rest days were paid two days' worth of salary regardless of whether they or the company requested that they work on the rest day, added the defendant.

The trial continues on Wednesday.