The Employment Claims Tribunal (ECT) is Singapore’s specialist forum for salary and dismissal disputes: claims up to S$20,000 (S$30,000 with union-assisted mediation), no lawyers at the hearing, and a compulsory mediation stage at TADM before the tribunal ever sees the case. This guide walks the whole route from first demand to enforcement.
I’m Roy. I’m an Associate Director at A.W. Law LLC, and although I’m not allowed to appear at the ECT for you, a fair part of my employment disputes work is getting people ready to run this route well, or handling the cases that fall outside it.
What the ECT is
The tribunal was created by the Employment Claims Act 2016 to give employees and employers a fast, cheap forum for the most common employment fights. It sits within the State Courts and hears:
- Statutory salary-related claims. Unpaid salary, unpaid overtime, and other entitlements under the Employment Act 1968.
- Contractual salary-related claims. Unpaid sums promised in the contract and expressed in money: fixed bonuses, allowances, commission owed under a defined scheme.
- Wrongful dismissal claims. Dismissal without just cause, including sham retrenchments.
It cannot hear discrimination grievances, work-injury compensation, or anything above its limits.
Step 1: TADM mediation, which is compulsory
You cannot file at the ECT directly. Every claim starts at the Tripartite Alliance for Dispute Management (TADM), filed online for S$10 or S$20. The deadlines are the sharp edge of the whole system:
| Claim type | File at TADM within |
|---|---|
| Salary claim, still employed | 1 year of the dispute arising |
| Salary claim, no longer employed | 6 months of your last day |
| Wrongful dismissal | 1 month of your last day |
At TADM, a mediator works both sides toward a settlement. Most claims end here, and a mediated settlement is recorded and enforceable. Our post on what to do when your employer isn’t paying salary covers the preparation that makes this stage go well: the written demand, the payslips, the arithmetic.
Step 2: the claim referral certificate
If mediation fails, the TADM mediator issues a claim referral certificate. That certificate is your ticket to the tribunal, and it comes with its own filing window stated on its face. Treat it like a boarding pass with a gate-closing time: get the ECT filing done promptly through the online portal.
Step 3: the hearing
ECT hearings are informal. No lawyers appear for either side; a company sends its own officer or employee. A tribunal magistrate reads the documents, hears both parties, and asks questions directly. What wins cases here is not advocacy, it’s preparation:
- A one-page chronology. Dates of employment, salary period, what was paid, what wasn’t.
- The documents in order. Contract, payslips, CPF statements, the demand letter, the replies.
- The arithmetic laid out. The tribunal should be able to see your number derive itself.
Orders take effect like court judgments. If the employer doesn’t pay, enforcement (seizure of goods, garnishing the bank account) runs through the courts, and that stage is one a lawyer can handle for you. Appeals are deliberately narrow: permission is required and only points of law qualify, so the hearing is effectively your one shot.
ECT, SCT, or the civil courts?
People mix up the tribunals, understandably. The rule of thumb: employment money goes to the ECT, everything else small goes to the Small Claims Tribunal, and claims too big or too tangled for either go to the civil courts, where lawyers act for the parties. If you’re an ex-employee owed both salary and, say, a director’s loan repayment, you may genuinely have two different forums for the two claims. That’s a ten-minute routing question worth asking before you file anything.
Where a lawyer fits a lawyer-free tribunal
In my experience, the cases that go wrong at the ECT go wrong before the hearing: the claim was filed after the deadline, the wrong components were claimed (a discretionary bonus argued as a contractual one), or the evidence never made the employer’s arithmetic look wrong. All three are preventable with an hour of preparation. And when the claim exceeds S$20,000, involves a settlement agreement with a non-compete attached, or the employer is insolvent, the right forum was never the ECT to begin with.
What to do next
Check your deadline first (1 year, 6 months, or 1 month, depending on your claim), then file at TADM online and assemble your chronology and documents. The system is built for you to run it yourself, and most people can.
If the claim is over the limit, the deadline maths is tight, or you want a second pair of eyes on the evidence before mediation, the first ten minutes with us are free. Book an Employment Dispute Discovery Session, in English, Malay, or Tamil.
