"HONESTLY, IT'S STILL GREY": The HR Confession That Should Have Stopped Everything - And Didn't

PT Pegaunihan Technology Indonesia's HR team charged Engly Heryanto Ndaomanu with using someone else's badge ID. Their own document says he used his own. When confronted, HR admitted the case was still 'grey.' The sanction was issued anyway. This is the story of how a company punished a man it wasn't sure had done anything wrong.

There is a moment in this case that should have ended it.

It didn't happen in a courtroom. It didn't happen before a government mediator. It happened in a room between HR representatives and two employees, when the company's own HR faced with a direct question it couldn't answer, said out loud what the documents had been quietly showing all along.

"SP Pak Engly sejujurnya masih abu-abu." (HR Ratih, PT Pegaunihan Technology Indonesia)

Translation: "Honestly, Mr. Engly's warning letter is still grey."

Grey. Not proven. Not established. Not clear.

The company's own HR, in her own words, describing the evidentiary basis for a First and Final Warning Letter, the most severe disciplinary sanction the company's regulations allow.

And yet the sanction stood. The bonuses remained erased. The case continued through eight official forums. The company continued to defend a position that its own HR had privately admitted was uncertain.

THE DOCUMENT THAT CONTRADICTS ITSELF

The charge against Engly Heryanto Ndaomanu was specific: he had used someone else's badge ID. This is a defined violation under company regulations, carrying defined consequences.

The document used to formalize that charge, the SPPT itself, contained a different description. Where the charge specified use of someone else's badge ID, the document recorded that Engly used his own badge ID.

These aren't the same act. They aren't even similar acts. One describes a violation. The other describes normal, unremarkable behavior that every employee performs every working day.

The company charged Engly with doing something. Their own document recorded him doing something completely different. One of these cannot be true.

When this contradiction was raised, when Engly and his legal representatives pointed to the document and asked how a charge of using someone else's badge ID could be supported by a document recording him using his own, HR didn't have an answer.

THE CLAUSE THAT DIDN'T EXIST

What followed the silence is perhaps more revealing than the silence itself.

HR's response, once the initial question had been absorbed, wasn't to acknowledge the error. It wasn't to correct the record. It wasn't to request time to review the documentation.

It was to invent a new legal basis.

HR stated that there was another clause, one that covered "acts equivalent to" the specific violation charged. Under this verbal construction, even if the document didn't precisely match the charge, the sanction could still be justified by a broader category of equivalent conduct.

There was one problem with this explanation: the clause didn't appear anywhere in the SPPT document.

A disciplinary sanction must rest on a documented legal basis. The basis exists in the document or it does not exist. A clause cited verbally, in response to a challenge, that cannot be found in the formal instrument of punishment is not a legal basis. It is an improvisation.

The company had charged Engly under a specific provision. That provision didn't match the facts as recorded in their own document. And when pressed, HR's answer was to reference a provision that wasn't written anywhere in the document at all.

"HONESTLY, IT'S STILL GREY"

The conversation continued. And at some point, facing the contradiction in the document, facing the absence of the clause from the written record, facing questions that had no clean answers, HR Ratih said what she said.

"SP Pak Engly sejujurnya masih abu-abu."

Grey. The word matters. Grey doesn't mean probably guilty. Grey doesn't mean we believe he did it but the paperwork has issues. Grey means: we are not sure. We do not know. The case has not been established.

A First and Final Warning Letter is not a grey instrument. It is the maximum disciplinary measure available. You do not issue the maximum measure for a grey case. Unless the measure was never about the case.

The admission was made. The sanction wasn't withdrawn. The bonuses weren't restored. The case continued. Eight official forums were evaded rather than faced. And at every one of those forums, the company defended a sanction that its own HR had privately described as uncertain.

IN DUBIO PRO REO: THE THREE-WORD PRINCIPLE THAT CONDEMNS THIS CASE

There is a legal principle so fundamental that it predates modern labor law, predates the Indonesian Republic, predates every regulation PT Pegaunihan Technology Indonesia has ever cited in its defense.

In dubio pro reo. When in doubt, rule in favor of the accused.

This principle exists in every serious legal system on earth, criminal law, civil law, administrative law, labor law, because every serious legal system has arrived at the same conclusion across centuries of jurisprudence: doubt is not a basis for punishment. Doubt is a reason to stop. HR Ratih did not use the phrase in dubio pro reo. She used a simpler word. Grey.

She may not have known she was invoking one of the oldest principles in the history of law. But she was. Grey is doubt. "Abu-abu" is uncertainty. And uncertainty, in every legal framework that deserves to be called one, is supposed to protect the person being judged, not become the footnote beneath their punishment.

Doubt is not a basis for punishment. Doubt is a reason to stop. PT Pegaunihan Technology Indonesia didn't stop.

So here is the question this company has never answered, not at Bipartite I, not at Bipartite II, not at Bipartite III, not at Tripartite I, II, or III, not before the Provincial Labor Inspectorate, not at the Batam City Legislature public hearing, not in any of the eight consecutive official forums they spent seven months avoiding:

If your own HR, the person who wrote the sanction, administered the process, and sat across the table from the employee, described his case as "honestly still grey," then by what principle of law, logic, or basic human decency did you issue the most severe disciplinary sanction available?

Was it because the evidence was overwhelming? Your HR said it was grey. Was it because the charge was clearly proven? Your own document contradicts the charge. Was it because the process was fair and thorough? You evaded every forum that would have tested it.

In dubio pro reo doesn't ask whether you were certain. It tells you what to do when you aren't: you stop. You don't punish. You don't erase six months of earned bonuses. You don't label a man an offender for an act your own document doesn't record him committing. You stop.

PT Pegaunihan Technology Indonesia didn't stop.

They had doubt. They had their own HR's admission of doubt. They had a document that contradicted the charge. They had a clause that existed nowhere in writing. And they had, apparently, not the slightest interest in what three thousand years of legal principle had to say about what to do next.

The Latin is elegant. The principle is simple. The violation of it is on record. In dubio pro reo. When in doubt, rule in favor of the accused. They doubted. They knew they doubted. And they punished him anyway.

WHAT WAS SAID TO RIEKE

The same conversation contained something else, a statement directed not at Engly, but at Rieke Dyah Astiwi, who was present. HR Ratih told Rieke: "Kamu salah, Rieke." You are wrong, Rieke. And then, in the same breath, about Engly: "Untuk Engly, dia benar. Ini gara-gara kamu makanya dia kena SP. Untuk Engly akan kita rapatkan lagi."

Translation: "For Engly, he is right. It's because of you that he got the warning letter. For Engly, we will discuss further."

Read that sequence carefully. HR told Rieke she was wrong. HR told Engly he was right. HR said Engly's sanction was Rieke's fault. HR said Engly's case would be reviewed further.

What happened next was the opposite of what was promised. There was no further review. There was no distinction between the two cases. Identical sanctions were issued to both employees, despite HR's explicit statement that Engly was right, that his case was grey, that it would be reconsidered.

The promise of further deliberation became identical punishment. The acknowledgment that Engly was right became a sanction identical to the one issued to Rieke.

THE SEQUENCE IN FULL

WHAT THE DOCUMENT SAYS	WHAT HR CHARGED	THE CONTRADICTION
Badge ID miliknya sendiri (his own badge ID)	Menggunakan badge ID orang lain (using someone else's badge ID)	The charge and the document describe two different acts. One of them is false.
No reference to 'equivalent acts' clause anywhere in the SPPT	HR invented a verbal clause: 'and acts equivalent to that'	A clause that doesn't exist in the document cannot be the legal basis for the sanction.
HR's own admission: "SP Pak Engly sejujurnya masih abu-abu"	First and Final Warning Letter, the maximum sanction	HR admitted uncertainty. The sanction admits nothing.

This table doesn't represent an interpretation of events. It represents what HR said, what the document contains, and what the sanction nonetheless decreed. The contradictions aren't subtle. They are explicit, documented, and, in the case of the grey admission, spoken aloud by the person responsible for the process.

WHAT 'GREY' MEANS IN LAW

Indonesian labor law, specifically Law No. 13 of 2003 on Manpower and its implementing regulations, requires that disciplinary sanctions be supported by clear and proven violations. The burden of proof lies with the employer. A sanction issued in the absence of proven violation is legally challengeable.

"Grey" is not a legal standard. "Grey" is the opposite of proven. A company that issues a First and Final Warning Letter, with all of its financial and professional consequences, while its own HR acknowledges the case is grey, has issued a sanction that fails the most basic requirement of Indonesian labor law.

The grey admission wasn't made to a mediator. It wasn't made in a formal forum. It was made in a room. But it was heard. It was documented. And it is now on record.

WHY THE COMPANY STILL HAD TO DEFEND IT

The question that follows from all of this is not difficult to ask, but it is uncomfortable to answer: if HR knew the case was grey, why was the sanction not withdrawn?

The answer may lie not in the specific cases of Engly and Rieke, but in what withdrawing the sanction would have meant. A company that withdraws a First and Final Warning Letter because it cannot prove the underlying charge has acknowledged that its disciplinary process failed.

That acknowledgment opens the door to every other question, about the bonuses, about the KPI manipulation, about the collective punishment, about the ex-parte evidence, about the TikTok posts.

It is easier to defend a grey sanction through eight official forums than to admit, once, that the process that produced it was wrong. The cost of admission was too high. So the evasion continued.

Engly Heryanto Ndaomanu asked a simple question: where is the proof? His own company's HR, in response to that question, described the case as grey.

He is still waiting for an answer that is not grey.

So is the record.