Many of former VIP junket employees yet to receive the salaries and compensation they were promised by their ex-employers have expressed concern that they will be denied the overdue payments, the Macau Gaming Industry Employees Home said.
Those former casino workers, according to the group, won legal battles to secure the severance pay after taking their cases to the court. In spite of court rulings in their favour, the group said that they were worried that their former employers, who were mostly laden with debts, would be financially incapable of making them payments at the end of the day.
The plea for money back was made by the gaming workers’ association, which conducted a survey last year to keep tabs on their lives after being made redundant.
Respondents were mainly casino staff who previously worked for VIP junket operators Suncity, Tak Chun and Guangdong Group, accounting for 49.5 per cent, 18.1 per cent and 12.3 per cent of the total, respectively.
As for the main reason behind their departure from their former jobs, some 86.1 per cent respondents said they had no choice but to leave their companies after their closure with voluntary resignation packages.
The survey suggested that 85.1 per cent of the respondents remained unemployed in a job market where there were fewer vacancies, and they had no professional experience or skill other than working in the casino.
The group said that as the domestic economy had recovered significantly in recent months, most of the former VIP Junket employees managed to land new jobs in sales and food delivery with ‘unsatisfactory pay’.
Most of them wanted to return to the gaming industry, the association stated.
