Employers dependency on foreign workers in Malaysia food service industry: A preliminary study

As a rapid developing country, many Malaysian citizens are currently living in the fast paced of life. This way of life has developed a trend of eating out in various restaurants and food stalls due to lack of time for food preparations. This trend has contributed to the booming of the food serving industry businesses and has created mass vacancies for employment. However, these employment vacancies are occupied by foreign workers. This paper is intends to (1) examine the relationship between contributing factors with employers dependency towards foreign workers and lastly (2) analyze the effects of contributing factors towards employers dependency on foreign workers. There are four variables used in this research namely government laws and regulations, attitudes of workers, availability of local workers and wages and incentive. Here, this study is applying correlation and regression to analyze the data. The findings show that all variables are associated with employers' dependency towards foreign workers. Lack of law and regulation enforcement is the most significant predictor that influences employers' dependencies towards foreign workers.