Thai Employees

[pk59]

Hi,

It is my understanding that a company requires 4 Thai employees for it to obtain a WP for a foreigner. What are the minimum requirements, ie wages, length of employment, hours per week etc. for them to qualify as employees.

Thanks,

Mike

[Sunbelt Asia]

It is my understanding that a company requires 4 Thai employees for it to obtain a WP for a foreigner.

Sorry this is not correct. The Labor Department could care less how many Thais you employ. It’s only Immigration if you apply for the extension of stay permit based on business. In that case it is 4 Thais per work permit.

If you cannot meet that condition, then you you must do 90 day visa runs with a multi entry one year visa or have a extension of stay based on marriage, investment or education.

What are the minimum requirements, ie wages

Minimum salary for that province. In BKk it is 5,100 Baht per month.

]ength of employment,

not important

hours per week etc. for them to qualify as employees.

Only the salary per month and the company is deducting the social fund ( 5% of the salary with a max of 750 Baht per employee) out of the check and matching it.

www.sunbeltasia.com

[Sumitr Man]

Mike:

I agree with Sun Belt - the ratio of Thai to farang employees is grey, to say the least. Note, it is policy that there be a ration of 4:1 - the regulation seems to be more vague than that - I think it says up to 7. However, I've certainly known people who have obtained WPs for farang employees without meeting the ration requirement.

IME, immigration are far more interested in the revenue figures of your company than the emplyee ratio - but that is just my experience.

One thing here, in the time I've spent in Thailand the rules/regulations/policy in this regard have changed several times, so what happened yesterday to Bob may not happen today to Tom. That said, if you have good revenue figures and pay your taxes on time, IME you will have far more chance of getting your work permit than if you do neither of these but employ 10 Thais - which is not to say you may not need to employ 4 Thais

SM

[Sunbelt Asia]

SM.

You are correct, things do change. But as of right now, no written rule or regulation states you must have 4 Thais employed to get a work permit. Can an officer make that policy? Anybody can do anything, you can't control them but you can gently point out in the current regulation this is not a requirement to obtain a work permit as of now.

By the way, they are checking bank accounts for the 2 million Baht for the Alien Business License when applying for a work permit. We had 5 cases in the last two days that they asked to see 2 million in cash in the bank for each work permit with the application. As of now this is only for foreign owned companies. On 51% Thai owned firms, paid up capital can be cash, equipment, inventory, shares of other firms, "Know-all" not just cash. This of course can change.

So first hand, change has happen in the last 48 hours, that’s why it is important to have a good service provider to stay on top of the new decisions and advise their clients on going that path or if other legal options are available.

www.sunbeltasia.com

[pk59]

Thanks for the info

Mike

[Indo-Siam]

The Work Permit office dropped its rules about Thai employee headcount in late 2002 - since then, they do not even ask about this. Before this, there was no "gray area" of doubt - they actually stamped in your WP Booklet a section where then wrote out your required quota of employees (my book says 4).

Salary rates for various areas of Thailand are laid out at bottom section of:

http://www.boi.go.th/english/how/labor_costs.asp

Cheers!

Steve Sykes

Managing Director

Indo-Siam Group

Bangkok

[email protected]

www.thaistartup.com

Skype: sykesbkk

[autonomous_unit]

The Work Permit office dropped its rules about Thai employee headcount in late 2002 - since then, they do not even ask about this.  Before this, there was no "gray area" of doubt - they actually stamped in your WP Booklet a section where then wrote out your required quota of employees (my book says 4).

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However, Thai employees can still be a requirement for the work permit if they approve in part based on knowledge-transfer.

I got stamped with a requirement to transfer some computer skills to two Thais with my work permit issued a couple of weeks ago in Bangkok. The lawyer who handled my application said this was relatively common when approving computer or tech experts. On the other hand, they might have done this simply because the org chart did indicate some Thai employees already? I'm not interested in doing a controlled experiment to find out.