Concerned Relative

If it helps, I know the man personally and he is in Savannakhet right now. He applied for a 3-month tourist visa and was told not to come back in three months because the consulate would not be there. (NOT because of previous visas or anything of the sort.) He is staying the weekend and will go back to find out more on Monday. In addition, we also plan to call the consulate on Monday.

I am not posting to start any kind of rumor at all. I am due to go to Savannakhet next month and only due to circumstance did not book my travel and hotels two days ago. I have checked the consulate website and did not find any information there. The question I posed is sincere. I would like to know if anyone else knows any more about this. I certainly will share any more information I get in the coming days and happily admit if there was a misunderstanding between them and him, or him and me.

As a last note, if the 'visa' section of the forum entitled 'thai visa' is not the place to ask a QUESTION like this, then I suppose I will have to wander outside and ask (comment edited seeing as the helpful guy above me has a buffalo icon, too. :-))

 

I am not an 'it', thank you. My apologies that I didn't get the message before closing hours or that the subject might be personally really important to me.

Please refrain from useless posts.

I have just heard that someone was told "don't come back" to the consulate, as it would be closing within two months. Does anyone have any information about this? Will call the consulate as soon as we can on Monday.

Just to update/add closure to this topic:

The staff eventually went to the labor office to discuss their options. As expected, the officer there claimed that, due to the signed form, there were no grounds to investigate the hotel. He did, however, give specific advice as to how the staff should proceed to open a discussion with ownership/upper management.

The staff then wrote a letter to the owner stating their complaint. (The owner evidently was aware of the theft, but had not been told about the plan to recover funds from the staff.) A few members of regional management had a scheduled audit shortly thereafter and sat down for a (mandatory, unpaid if not on shift) meeting with the staff to discuss the issue.

About a week and a half later, a second unpaid meeting was held at which it was announced that ownership and management had agreed to "support" the staff by covering 40% of the loss. This reduced the amount to approximately one month's salary for a regular employee.

I expect that this will be the end of the issue, as I don't think anyone involved has the means or inclination to start a legal battle over what would ultimately be an interpretation of coercion and intimidation, seeing as they all "agreed" to cover the loss. I also expect that employee turnover in the next six months might be higher than usual.

Thanks for any advice that was given. I hope that in the future someone might be saved from making the same mistake and some good will come of it.

I'm truly amazed that so few people have been reported missing. It seems there would be little chance for anyone stuck in that maze to have gotten out after the first few minutes. Don't think I've ever been there without getting lost trying to find my way out or discovering some new area I never knew existed.

I hope that this will bring out the good in the community and people will work together to alleviate the strains that this loss will create.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=529528793796496

The CCTV exists, but I can't say if it is of a quality that would be of any use whatsoever. That's up to the police now.

A member of the labor office in Phuket Town stated that this practice is, in fact, illegal according to Thai labor law. Even in cases where the staff has 'agreed' to pay, a request made by the staff to the labor office would allow them to set up a meeting with hotel management/owners. Staff have now been informed of this option and I expect that, so long as it isn't a legal proceeding, a contingent of them will make this request from the labor office soon.

From my perspective, the chances of stopping it are much less since the signing of the forms, but I hope that the labor office will respect the fact that the staff were not exactly given the option to sign the form, nor were they given time to seek advice concerning it, nor were they even given a copy of it. Furthermore, though the theft has been reported to police, they have not even conducted any interviews as of yet.

It sounds like someone in management knew that this was wrong, knew the power that employee signatures would have, and pushed the whole thing to be done as quickly as possible, rendering the employees powerless.

I'll ask again, was the matter reported to police? If not, why not?

It would seem only middle to upper management would have access to over 100,000 baht cash - the same people who have probably stolen it, are now making everyone pay for it, and are possibly refusing to report it to the police.

I agree with SP. If it's only being handled internally - it will happen again.

Of course, there is one other explanation - the hotel may be going broke, and can't pay its bills, Eg. staff salary.

Sorry, NamKangMan, I meant to answer your question before. Yes, the matter was reported to police, albeit belatedly. As for the cash, it was shockingly (yet not surprisingly) accessible to all the staff and pretty much anybody else that would have paid attention to it. It has since been relocated to something called a "safe".

I can't of course make accusations, but your statement about middle management has a ring of truth to it. Most of the staff in the department have worked at the hotel for more than a year, many of them two or more. Of the three new staff, the one in the elevated position has several times (before the incident) turned a single day's leave into several, sometimes with no call. If I were to take a wild guess...

Cash room deposits in international currency were being kept in a very ill-advised location.

Thanks all for the advice, even that which suggests I stay well away.

It turns out that yesterday management held a "meeting" and "advised" all the staff in the department to sign a form. I don't know exactly what the form said, but it grants the hotel permission to withhold the funds. Sadly, I suspect that it was also an acknowledgement of failure of duty.

Having talked directly with the staff, I can tell you that at the moment, they are all too scared to resign. Justified in their thinking or not, they are all under the impression that if they resign, the police will become directly involved with their life for a while (as a prime suspect of a large theft). As to quitting to avoid paying, they are well aware that if they leave now, they will never see another baht from the hotel, which is a bit hard to deal with nearing the end of low season.

I am directly involved only in the sense this takes away a month's rent, utilities, and our child's savings deposit out of our pockets. We will, of course, be fine, but I don't have to be happy about it. I have no intention of creating a big s@#$storm over it, but I certainly am going to ask enough questions and do enough research until I'm convinced that nothing can be done. (A point which I suspect was reached upon staff signing that form.)

I am not so naive as to think this doesn't happen in this country, nor do I feel that we have singly been screwed over. It stings pretty good though, knowing that someone didn't do anything wrong (and has been working a crazy schedule with extra hours) only to be unjustly punished financially.

To change the course of the conversation a bit, is there anything that can be done to protect against this in the future, or is this ultimately another addition to the growing 'pack up and get out' list?

Is it acceptable/legal in Thailand for a large hotel chain to recuperate stolen/lost funds by docking staff pay?

I'm not comfortable sharing specifics at the moment for fear of further retribution against the staff, but the amount missing was in the 6 figures (THB), and each of the staff in the department are to be docked about the equivalent of a month's salary for a supervisor. To emphasize how much that is, it equates to about 300 hours of work for a regular employee.

So far as I know, there aren't any leads, so management is holding everyone to blame.