Lee Swee Seng JCA:

[1] This is a case where after having served the company for some 13 years an employee was chosen, very unfortunately, for retrenchment, as part of the company's worldwide policy of restructuring by downsizing as investments from clients on oil exploration had slowed down in tandem with the falling oil price then in the second half of 2015. To be fair to the company, many others in the company in Malaysia were also selected for retrenchment.

[2] However the nub of the complaint was that the procedure of Last-In FirstOut ("LIFO") had not been followed and that there was no cogent reason not to follow it. Likewise, the employee argued, retrenchment should start with the foreign contract employees first before Malaysians, all things being more or less equal. He argued that the retrenchment exercise was mala fide and that it was a cloak to conceal what in effect was the company's perception that his performance was poor or that he had a bad attitude as he had objected to an earlier proposed transfer to another project where he would be reporting to one who was previously his subordinate whose performance he had given his performance appraisal as his superior.

[3