Employment & Immigration

Gateway’s Employment & Immigration Practice Group’s experience and expertise span across the following subject matters:

• Minimum employee mandatory benefits and protections;
• Social contributions;
• Union related matters;
• Workplace safety and injury;
• Work passes and immigration matters (including applications thereof;
• Regulatory audits (i.e Fair Consideration Framework);
• Workplace discrimination;
• Workplace investigation;
• Employment-related tax matters; and
• Employment-related due diligence in acquisition

We have since grown from strength to strength. From initially advising only local companies and straight-forward employment matters, the Practice Group is now advising numerous multi-national companies on highly complex, cross jurisdictional and high-level employment and HR matters. Further, we take up both contentious and non-contentious work. In respect of the above subject matters, we do the following:

• draft and review all employment-related agreements and documents (including Equity Compensation Plans);
• apply for work and immigration passes for foreign employees and dependants;
• provide strategic communication advice in respect of regulatory audits and non-compliances;
• undertake internal investigatory work;
• advise senior management on crafting commercially and legally sound workplace policies;
• advise senior management on possible complex but creative employment solutions;
• represent employees in claiming against organisations;
• represent employers in defending against employee claims and regulatory breaches;
• enforce non-compete provisions against critical ex-employees strategically (including applying for emergency injunctions);
• represent employers in union negotiation.

Our notable clients include a highly well-known global social media company and numerous NYSE-listed multinational technology companies. We consistently work with a major US international law firm and a regional French legal consultancy firm to provide our legal services to their multinational clients in primarily the technology, automobile, finance and banking, engineering, energy and medical sectors.

Our clients appreciate our commercial, long term and strategic advice, and practically, our quick turnaround time and high responsiveness. Our extensive knowledge in local policies and politics, coupled with our intimate understanding of the inner workings of regulatory bodies, plays a critical role in effective and efficient engagement with such bodies when undertaking audit and work pass application work.

As part of our service offering, we regularly published Employment Updates for our clients, so that they can be kept abreast with the latest developments in Singapore’s Employment and Immigration law. Our updates are subsequently picked up by LexisNexis and Singapore Law Watch.