13th Mth "Bonus"

came across this interesting blog post so i tot i'd share it w all of u..

copied parts of it directly from http://asingaporeanson.blogspot.com/2011/10/coveted-13th-month-bonus-in-singapore.html?spref=fb:

"To me, February is the only month you get paid correctly in the whole year in Singapore. Employers in Singapore will never overpay you in February. Fat hope and you know it. There are four weeks in a month and we get paid for 28 days in a month. that's it. Straightforward.

In short we are underpaid in every other month other than February.

January - 3 days

March - 3 days

April - 2 days

May - 3 days

June - 2 days

July - 3 days

August - 3 days

September - 2 days

October - 3 days

November - 2 days

December - 3 days

3 + 3 + 2 + 3 + 2 + 3 + 3 + 2 + 3 + 2 + 3 = 29 days.

The shorter way to calculate this would be:

1 month 4 weeks.

You get paid 12 times a year = 12 x 4 = 48 weeks.

There are 52 weeks in a year. 52 - 48 = 4 weeks unpaid

The fact is that Singapore employers hold 29 days of your pay over the year and could refuse to pay you your rightful money if you did not 'perform'. Even if they do it, that meant many employees in Singapore did not get any bonuses from their companies at all. The 13th month is your pay. It is Not a bonus!

In reality, if they pay us back the '13th month bonus', they employer still owe us 1 day's wages (29 - 28) and get away with it year after year, decade after decade. If you leave the company before the year is up your '13th month bonus' is forfeited instead of pro-rated. That's robbery. "

To summarise, the writer is saying tt if the only mth we are paid correctly is in Feb, which has 28 days (most yrs!).. so means we are underpaid for the rest of the days for months which has more than 28 days (which is every mth except feb)..

adding up those xtra days that are in excess of 28 days, it comes up to 29 days a yr..

so our 13th month "bonus" is actually our pay for those xtra days..

and since the "normal" no. of days we are paid a mth is 28, every yr our employer owes us 1 day of pay (2 days, for leap yrs.. hehe)!

so the 13th mth is actually part of our pay and not part of our bonus! dam it.. now i feel cheated! esp after working 4 yrs in a co. that doesn't pay 13th mth at all! =(

hope you found this an interesting read as i did~