# Sabah and Sarawak: the Labour Ordinances, not the Employment Act

> East Malaysia runs on two separate statutes with two separate labour departments — and both were substantially rewritten with effect from 1 May 2025.

- Category: employment
- Language: en
- Status: published
- Updated: 2026-07-20
- Canonical: https://negaraku.md/en/employment/sabah-sarawak-labour-ordinance

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Search "Malaysia employment law" and every result you get describes Peninsular Malaysia
and says so nowhere. That silence has a cost: a national HR policy written against the
Employment Act 1955 is simply the wrong statute for anyone employed in Kota Kinabalu,
Sandakan, Kuching or Miri.

East Malaysia has always run on its own labour statutes. What changed recently is that
those statutes stopped being twenty years out of date.

## Two statutes, two departments

| | Peninsular Malaysia | Sabah | Sarawak |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Statute | Employment Act 1955 (Act 265) | Labour Ordinance (Sabah Cap. 67) | Labour Ordinance (Sarawak Cap. 76) |
| Recent amendment | Act A1651, in force 1 Jan 2023 | Act A1753, in force 1 May 2025 | Act A1754, in force 1 May 2025 |
| Enforcing body | Jabatan Tenaga Kerja Semenanjung Malaysia | Jabatan Tenaga Kerja Negeri Sabah | Jabatan Tenaga Kerja Sarawak |
| Official site | jtksm.mohr.gov.my | jtksabah.gov.my | jtkswk.gov.my |

The statutory officer differs too. Act 265 speaks of the **Director General of Labour**;
the Ordinances speak of the **Director**. Approvals, permissions and complaints under the
Ordinances go to the state department. Filing a Sabah matter with JTKSM does not start
the clock.

What does *not* differ: EPF, SOCSO, EIS, PCB and the HRD Corp levy are federal schemes
of nationwide application. The state-specific layer is labour standards only.

## What the 2025 amendments did

Both Ordinances had drifted badly. Sabah's coverage was still capped at employees earning
**RM2,500 and below**; Sarawak's was similarly wage-limited. The 2022 peninsular reform
opened a three-year gap in which the same employer, running the same job, owed materially
different entitlements depending on which side of the South China Sea the work happened.

The **Labour Ordinance of Sabah (Amendment) Act 2025 (Act A1753)** and the **Labour
Ordinance of Sarawak (Amendment) Act 2025 (Act A1754)** closed most of it. Act A1754
received Royal Assent on **20 March 2025** and was published in the Gazette on
**14 April 2025**. Both Acts left commencement to ministerial notification, and both were
brought into operation on **1 May 2025 — except Part IVA**, the special provisions
relating to minimum standards of housing, accommodation and employee amenities.

The headline harmonisations, now common to all three jurisdictions:

- coverage extended to **all employees under a contract of service**, replacing the wage-capped model
- the working week reduced to **45 hours**
- maternity leave increased to **98 consecutive days**
- **seven consecutive days** of paid paternity leave introduced
- **flexible working arrangement** provisions introduced
- **sexual harassment** provisions introduced, tracking the Part XVA structure
- a **forced labour** offence introduced
- **anti-discrimination** provisions introduced

Act A1754 also did something quietly significant: a general amendment substituting
**employee** for *worker* and **domestic employee** for *domestic servant* wherever they
appear. If you are working from an older Sarawak text, the vocabulary will not match.

## Where the ordinances still diverge

This is the part that gets glossed over as "now the same as the peninsula". They are
aligned in policy, not identical in drafting, and the drafting is what you have to comply
with.

Sarawak's amendment **replaced the Schedule entirely with a new First Schedule** and
inserted new Second and Third Schedules. The new First Schedule paragraph 1 is the
familiar universal limb — *any person who has entered into a contract of service*.
Paragraph 2 then disapplies, for a person **whose wages exceeds four thousand ringgit a
month**:

- the definitions of *normal hours of work* and *overtime* in section 2
- subsections (6), (7), (8), (9) and (10) of **section 104**
- subsection (6) of **section 105**
- subsections (2), (3), (4) and (5) of **section 105c**
- **section 105f**
- paragraph (r) of subsection (2) of **section 130o**

Compare the Employment Act's paragraph 1A, which disapplies ss.60(3), 60A(3), 60C(2A),
60D(3), 60D(4) and s.60J. The threshold figure is identical. The mechanism is not: Sarawak
switches off the *definitions* of normal hours and overtime as well as the operative
subsections, and reaches into s.130o, which has no Act 265 counterpart. You cannot
translate an Act 265 compliance matrix into Sarawak by find-and-replace.

Sarawak's new **Third Schedule** is a list of hazardous work — physical hazards including
work at height, extreme temperature, excessive noise or vibration, radioactive substances
and ionising radiation; chemical hazards under the Occupational Safety and Health
(Classification, Labelling and Safety Data Sheet of Hazardous Chemicals) Regulations 2013
and the Environmental Quality (Scheduled Wastes) Regulations 2005; biological hazards; and
construction, timber, offshore and near-water work. There is no equivalent schedule in
Act 265.

## What to do about Part IVA

Part IVA — minimum standards for housing, accommodation and employee amenities — was
deliberately held back from the 1 May 2025 commencement in both states. Employers who
provide accommodation in Sabah or Sarawak should treat its status as a live question and
confirm with the state department rather than assuming either that it is in force or that
it never will be. On the peninsula the equivalent regime sits in the Employees' Minimum
Standards of Housing, Accommodations and Amenities Act 1990 (Act 446), a federal statute.

## Common mistakes

**Writing one handbook against Act 265.** Every entitlement clause needs a Sabah and
Sarawak column, or a jurisdiction clause that points to the right Ordinance.

**Assuming full harmonisation.** Policy converged on 1 May 2025. Section numbers,
schedules and the RM4,000 carve-out lists did not.

**Filing with JTKSM.** Approvals under the Ordinances are the Director's, at the state
department.

**Using a pre-2025 Ordinance text.** The consolidated Sarawak reprint published by the
Attorney General's Chambers is *as at 1 October 2024* — that is before Act A1754
commenced. Read it together with the amendment Act, not instead of it.

**Assuming Part IVA is live.** It was excepted from the 1 May 2025 commencement.

**Treating Labuan as Sabah.** Labuan is a Federal Territory; check which regime applies
to a given Labuan engagement rather than assuming the Sabah Ordinance follows the
geography.

## What's next

Pull your headcount by work location. For every employee in Sabah or Sarawak, re-check
overtime eligibility, maternity and paternity entitlement and the flexible-working
procedure against the relevant Ordinance rather than against Act 265. Then confirm the
current commencement status of Part IVA with JTK Sabah or JTK Sarawak directly — that is
the one moving piece.

## Sources

- Labour Ordinance of Sarawak (Amendment) Act 2025 (Act A1754) — https://www.jtkswk.gov.my/v2/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Act-A1754-LABOUR-ORDINANCE-OF-SARAWAK-AMENDMENT-ACT-2025-1.pdf (Jabatan Tenaga Kerja Sarawak)
- Labour Ordinance (Sarawak Cap. 76), updated text as at 1 October 2024 — https://lom.agc.gov.my/ilims/upload/portal/akta/outputaktap/2162184_BI/Labour%20Ord.%20%5BSarawak%20Cap.76%5D%20as%20at%201%20Oct%202024%20Online%20Final.pdf (Attorney General's Chambers)
- Employment Act 1955 (Act 265), updated text as at 1 January 2023 — https://jtksm.mohr.gov.my/sites/default/files/2023-11/Akta%20Kerja%201955%20(Akta%20265)_0.pdf (Jabatan Tenaga Kerja Semenanjung Malaysia)

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