The workers, all Bangladeshi nationals, plan to sue the companies, alleging exploitation, mistreatment, and non-payment of wages, according to independent migrant worker rights activist Andy Hall.

FMT is withholding the identity of the two firms.

Hall also said the workers, who engaged a US-based lawyer in mid-December last year, will be seeking damages, compensation and an apology from these two companies.

It is understood that the foreign workers will be seeking damages in excess of the sums they had requested from the companies during recent failed negotiations.

Hall is currently assisting prominent Washington DC-based lawyer Terrence P Collingsworth in coordinating the legal arrangements.

The suit will be filed in the US “hopefully in the next week or so”, he told FMT.

Hall said the foreign workers had on Dec 27, through Collingsworth, filed a formal complaint against the two firms with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Tokyo, Japan.

“Neither of the companies is engaging constructively with Collingsworth, so we are forced to escalate the matter,” he said.

The two companies, he added, had previously offered to pay each worker only RM20,000 and had failed to support their re-employment, food or medical related needs over the recent festive period.

He said the RM20,000 sum was insufficient even to cover loans the workers had taken out to cover the recruitment fees and related expenses they incurred to come to work at the Kawaguchi factory.

“In fact, a number of workers are still in significant debt and at risk of debt bondage.

‘’It is unclear whether the labour tribunal agreement from Dec 18, which could theoretically see Kawaguchi pay workers their back wages by November 2025, will ever be paid. Hence the need to take more affirmative action on behalf of the workers,” said Hall.

On Dec 18, it was reported that Kawaguchi had agreed to pay its foreign employees their overdue salaries, with the Putrajaya labour office agreeing to arrange for them to be employed by other companies.

The company reached the decision five days after the workers held a peaceful protest outside the factory in Port Klang to demand the salaries owed to them.