PUNISHMENT BEFORE PROOF: How a Taiwanese-Directed Company Evaded Eight Official Labor Hearings Over Seven Months

PT Pegaunihan Technology Indonesia, led by Taiwanese director Andy Hsieh, is accused of issuing disciplinary sanctions without evidence, systematically avoiding state-mandated forums, and suppressing key evidence that employees were never permitted to challenge.

Something is deeply wrong with the way PT Pegaunihan Technology Indonesia handled the cases of two employees in its research team.

The evidence strongly suggests that punishment came first, and evidence was assembled afterward. And when the company was asked to account for that punishment in official forums bipartite negotiations, tripartite mediation at the Batam Manpower Office, provincial labor oversight, and a hearing at the Batam City Legislative Council (DPRD) management chose not to appear. Repeatedly. With rotating excuses.

Eight forums. Seven months. One pattern that never changed.

PUNISHMENT WITHOUT PROOF

August 2025. Engly Heryanto Ndaomanu, Technical Manager in the Research and Development department, received a First and Final Warning Letter (SPPT) from company HR. His colleague, Rieke Dyah Astiwi, received an identical letter.

The accusation: violating Article 10.4(f) of the company's regulations, using another person's badge ID without supervisor knowledge, causing loss to the company.

The consequences: six months of performance bonuses were erased. The planned training program in Taiwan was cancelled. The careers of both researchers held hostage by a sanction that was never substantiated.

But what is striking is not merely punishment itself. It is how the punishment was constructed.

In Engly's warning letter, HR explicitly wrote that he had used his own badge ID to assist a colleague. Yet the article cited to punish him is one that pertains specifically to using someone else's badge ID.

A person was punished under Article A for conduct that HR's own document describes as Article B. This is not creative legal interpretation. It is a contradiction written by their own hand.

DOCUMENTS THAT KEPT CHANGING

The problems do not end there.

Rieke's warning letter was revised twice. The date of the alleged incident changed without any correction report, without signed acknowledgment, without any traceable explanation. HR called it a 'system error.

A formal disciplinary document that changes, twice, is not a typo. In law, it is something far more serious than that.

They refused to accept the sanctions without question. They pursued the channels provided by law: bipartite negotiation, then tripartite mediation at the Batam City Manpower Office (Disnaker).

This is where the story becomes remarkable.

The prophetic sanction

On August 15, 2025, Rieke Dyah Astiwi was called to a meeting with HR. On that same day, her First and Final Warning Letter was activated. The alleged violation it punishes is dated August 18, three days later.

PT Pegaunihan Technology Indonesia issued the most severe sanction available under its own regulations for something that, by its own document, had not yet happened. When asked to explain this sequence across eight official forums over seven months, the company's answer was consistent: they didn't show up.

SEVEN MONTHS OF EVASION

Bipartite I.

They arrived with a trade union representative, a right guaranteed under Indonesian labor law. HR responded by demanding they be expelled from the room.

Bipartite II and III.

HR did not appear. Twice in a row. With no accountable explanation.

Tripartite I, October 22, 2025.

The forum moved to the Batam Disnaker office. HR attended, but without a single person authorized to make any decision. Within ten minutes, five of HR's claims were refuted. Not one evidence-based rebuttal was offered in response.

Tripartite II, October 27, 2025.

Twenty minutes before the session, HR sent a cancellation. The medium: WhatsApp. The reason: a company audit. A state-organized forum, prepared by a Disnaker mediator, collapsed before it began, defeated by an unverifiable instant message.

Tripartite III, November 10, 2025.

HR appeared. The mediator requested the primary evidence: the CCTV footage that had been cited as the basis for the accusation. HR refused to hand it over. Reason: confidentiality.

Evidence claimed as the foundation of a disciplinary sanction, withheld in a forum that is, by law, already closed and confidential.

The mediation concluded. The CCTV footage and a detailed timeline were only submitted after the sessions ended, outside the forum, without Engly or Rieke present, and without them being given any opportunity to challenge a single frame.

The mediator's recommendation emerged in support of the company's sanctions. Remarkably, the mediator's own document acknowledges that the company failed to present adequate proof, yet still recommended the sanctions be upheld.

The recommendation is dated November 18, 2025. Engly and Rieke did not receive it until December 30, 2025. Yet on November 30, they had already written to Disnaker demanding to know why the recommendation had not yet been issued.

If the recommendation was issued on November 18, why were employees still writing to Disnaker on November 30, asking for it to be released?

The gap between the date on the document and the date it was actually received is now the subject of a formal complaint to the Ombudsman of the Republic of Indonesia. The Ombudsman has issued notification that an investigation has commenced.

LABOR OVERSIGHT AND LEGISLATURE: STILL NO SHOW

Engly and Rieke did not stop. They filed a complaint with the Provincial Labor Inspectorate (Wasnaker) of Riau Islands Province. Wasnaker took it seriously: an official summon was issued, signed directly by the Head of the Office, with an explicit directive; the company must appear in person; no substitutes permitted.

The pattern is repeated. The company did not appear.

Two days later, Commission IV of the Batam City Legislative Council convened Public Hearing. All parties were invited. For the first time in seven months, every relevant stakeholder was supposed to be in the same room.

Two hours before the hearing, a letter arrived at the DPRD building. It was sent by Andy Hsieh, Director of PT Pegaunihan Technology Indonesia. Its contents: a request for postponement, citing 'insufficient time to prepare for our attendance.

The letter was delivered by an ojek online driver, a motorcycle ride-hailing courier.

Andy Hsieh, the director of a multinational industrial company responded to a formal invitation from a regional legislature with a letter hand-delivered by a motorcycle courier, two hours before the session was scheduled to begin.

The question must be asked: how does a company of Pegaunihan's scale, through its director, display such a clear pattern of bad faith that obstructs the resolution of a lawful labor dispute? How does a company in this standing appear so unprepared for a Public Hearing at the Batam City DPRD? The sanctions had already been issued. The evidence they claimed already existed. All that was required was to show up and answer.

Unless, once again, this was evasion.

THE FULL COST

Six months of financial losses suffered a case that was never proven to violate any norm. A KPI rating suddenly downgraded to C for employees HR acknowledged in Tripartite Session III as 'Best Employees.' Psychological harm documented in hospital medical records. Careers suspended in indefinite uncertainty.

But perhaps what demands the most urgent attention from this case is not these individual losses.

In Batam, tens of thousands of workers in industrial zones do not possess the capacity to do what Engly and Rieke have done. They do not know which legal provisions can be challenged. They do not know which forums exist to seek remedy. They do not know which documents must be preserved from the very first day.

They received a warning letter. They stay silent. And no one writes about them.

This is what policymakers must confront: how do we protect workers from intimidation, unilateral punishment by companies, and retaliation against employees who pursue lawful channels?

PT Pegaunihan Technology Indonesia, under the direction of Andy Hsieh, has provided a case study in precisely what that protection must guard against.

Originally reported in Indonesian by TribunBatam.id. This English-language version has been prepared for international media distribution. All facts, names, dates, and forum records are documented and available for verification upon request.