Transcript of the above video:

In this video today as the title suggests we're going to be discussing the Labor Department quotas that are being placed on the ratio of foreign to Thai labor in the Kingdom and how this may have an impact on those who are present in the Kingdom on a Thai O visa based on either marriage to a Thai or as support to a Thai child, and how this is kind of shaking out.

As a preamble, there are another couple of videos on this channel discussing specifically these recent quotas that have been imposed by the Thai Labour Ministry, but to sum that up basically what you are looking at is Thai Labour Ministry has said that the quota, the cap if you will, on foreign workers within a given enterprise is going to be 20%. So that means the ratio of foreign workers, you can only have 20% of the overall work force be foreign, the other 80% needing to be Thai. Those who have been present in the Kingdom on a B Visa, maintaining a work permit in B status, the sort of standard way of maintaining an employment Visa in the Kingdom, are probably not going to be impacted by the changes to this quota system because those folks that are in that status, unless you have got certain exceptions which are provided under things like the Board of Investment scheme, but most just standard small businesses here in the Kingdom, you are going to need to deal with the 4:1 rule;  you're basically going to need 4 Thai employees for every 1 foreign employee in a given  endeavor. That if you note, the overall number of employees will be 5 in that kind of structure and 4 of whom being Thai that meets the requirements because one out of five is 20% the other four make up 80%.  So folks in normal B status that is not a big deal. Here is where it gets interesting. For O Visa holders who are either married to Thai or have Thai children, and in the vast majority of cases of people with O visas that's who you are dealing with especially those who are work authorized, the rules have always being that you only need two Thai employees for that specific foreign national. So you could get a work permit as long as there were two Thai employees in a ratio of 2:1 so that basically puts you out of three total employees one of whom was a foreigner that basically breaks this 20% quota rule. What are they going to do about this? It remains to be seen. I did another video specifically on the topic of permanent residence as they have their own rules with respect to the foreign: Thai labour ratios but it leads me to believe that we may be seeing a sea-change  with respect to where  once O  Visa holders had this sort of discreet differentiation with respect to the  requirements of how many Thai employees need to be on a given company, this new  imposition of the 20% cap on the ratio of foreign: Thai employees may result in basically everyone having to adhere to the same type of ratio that standard business visa and  work permit holders had to basically adhere to in the past.

So how this is going to work out in the future remains to be seen but I think it is something to seriously think about if you are on a small company with an O Visa. You might want to seriously consider keeping an eye on this topic because this change could have a substantial impact especially when it gets to that time of year when you have to go ahead and renew your work permit and renew your O visa, as it could have an impact on either one or both of those applications.

In this video today as the title suggests we're going to be discussing the Labor Department quotas that are being placed on the ratio of foreign to Thai labor in the Kingdom and how this may have an impact on those who are present in the Kingdom on a Thai O visa based on either marriage to a Thai or as support to a Thai child, and how this is kind of shaking out.

 

As a preamble, there are another couple of videos on this channel discussing specifically these recent quotas that have been imposed by the Thai Labour Ministry, but to sum that up basically what you are looking at is Thai Labour Ministry has said that the quota, the cap if you will, on foreign workers within a given enterprise is going to be 20%. So that means the ratio of foreign workers, you can only have 20% of the overall work force be foreign, the other 80% needing to be Thai. Those who have been present in the Kingdom on a B Visa, maintaining a work permit in B status, the sort of standard way of maintaining an employment Visa in the Kingdom, are probably not going to be impacted by the changes to this quota system because those folks that are in that status, unless you have got certain exceptions which are provided under things like the Board of Investment scheme, but most just standard small businesses here in the Kingdom, you are going to need to deal with the 4:1 rule;  you're basically going to need 4 Thai employees for every 1 foreign employee in a given  endeavor. That if you note, the overall number of employees will be 5 in that kind of structure and 4 of whom being Thai that meets the requirements because one out of five is 20% the other four make up 80%.  So folks in normal B status that is not a big deal. Here is where it gets interesting. For O Visa holders who are either married to Thai or have Thai children, and in the vast majority of cases of people with O visas that's who you are dealing with especially those who are work authorized, the rules have always being that you only need two Thai employees for that specific foreign national. So you could get a work permit as long as there were two Thai employees in a ratio of 2:1 so that basically puts you out of three total employees one of whom was a foreigner that basically breaks this 20% quota rule. What are they going to do about this? It remains to be seen. I did another video specifically on the topic of permanent residence as they have their own rules with respect to the foreign: Thai labour ratios but it leads me to believe that we may be seeing a sea-change  with respect to where  once O  Visa holders had this sort of discreet differentiation with respect to the  requirements of how many Thai employees need to be on a given company, this new  imposition of the 20% cap on the ratio of foreign: Thai employees may result in basically everyone having to adhere to the same type of ratio that standard business visa and  work permit holders had to basically adhere to in the past.

 

So how this is going to work out in the future remains to be seen but I think it is something to seriously think about if you are on a small company with an O Visa. You might want to seriously consider keeping an eye on this topic because this change could have a substantial impact especially when it gets to that time of year when you have to go ahead and renew your work permit and renew your O visa, as it could have an impact on either one or both of those applications.