How Many Thai Employees Needed For A Work Permit If Married To A Thai?

[Arkady]

I previously had a work permit with my own small company and, as a permanent resident was not required to have any Thai employees by the Labour Ministry. In fact, there were no questions about Thai staff on the form in those days and no photographs required of the office or anything like that. I left that company to work for a large company with thousands of Thai employees but am now thinking about returning to the small company. On investigating the current regulations I find that quite a lot has changed for the worse since the last time I got my own work permit in early 2010. This seems to be in recognition of the fact that the 2008 Working of Aliens Act contains some wording about the need to ensure priority of employment for Thai citizens, whereas that concept was absent from the original 1978 law.

For one thing the privilege of permanent residents to obtain a work permit without any Thai employees seems to have been withdrawn without explanation. I note that in the published regulations there are two mentions in the Department of Employment's Thai version website (the English version is just bare bones) of the ratio of 4 Thai employees to one foreigner but neither is a clear regulation. One mention on the page on "principles of issuing work permits to skilled workers, experts and managers" http://wp.doe.go.th/workpermit is an example given of how to ensure priority of employment to Thais where it says, "e.g. 4 Thai employees to 1 foreigner". The other is a mention in the website's Q&A page http://wp.doe.go.th/sites/default/files/faq1/faq1.pdf of other relevant regulations and it cites the 4 Thai employees rule as being part of the 1979 Immigration Act which it is not. It is actually a National Police Order pursuant to the Immigration Act which naturally goes into no detail about NON-IMM B visa extensions which had not even been invented in 1979. Anyway the Q&A section doesn't say that Labour Ministry has to follow the same regulations as Immigration. It just mentions them as being relevant.

Questions

1. Now the Labour Ministry's regulations say clearly that for those married to a Thai only Bt 1 million in paid-up capital is required for a work permit but makes no mention of a reduction in the number of Thai employees needed in such a case. However, I notice that many posters on TV say that only 2 Thai employees are needed for some one married to a Thai. Is this the case and, if so, is there any regulation in writing about it or is it just left to the discretion of individual DOE offices and staff?

2. My next question is can a Thai spouse who is a director and shareholder of the company can be counted as one of the Thai employees for work permit purposes, if she is working in the business and draws a monthly salary? I note that the documents required from the employer include the prior month's receipts for staff Social Tax payments but not monthly filings the Revenue Dept of PND 1 withholding tax from staff salaries which are required by Immigration for NON-IMM B extensions. Since the SSO refuses to register employees who are also directors and/or shareholders of their companies for Social Tax, that means there will be no record of the Thai spouse as an employee in the documents required by the Labour Ministry.

3. What level of detail does the Labour Miinistry go into in verifying the Thai employees? Do they require photographs of them in action at the work place as Immigration does? Do they send inspectors to the work place?

My questions are purely about work permits, not NON-IMM B extensions or anything to do with Immigration. I would be extremely grateful for a reply from Sunbelt.

[Sunbelt Asia]

To answer you posts point by point

1. The Labor Office in Bangkok used to allow two employees but since the floods they have required four Thai employees per work permit. Outside of Bangkok it may vary, we have heard reports that some officers in the provinces will allow 2.

2. The Thai director does not count as an employee as the company does not pay into the Social Welfare fund on a director and the Labor Office requires that you pay into the Social Welfare fund in order to obtain a work permit.

3. Bangkok has started investigating new firms, checking on their offices and checking employees. Where Bangkok leads, the provinces will often follow

[sunbeltlegal][/sunbeltlegal]