THE COST OF ASKING WHY: How Two Employees Were Punished Simply for Demanding Proof of Their Own Sanctions

When Engly Heryanto Ndaomanu and Rieke Dyah Astiwi asked a straightforward question "What is the evidence against us?" PT Pegaunihan Technology Indonesia answered not with proof, but with an escalating campaign of labels, collective punishment, career destruction, digital and financial retaliation that continues to this day.

In most functional workplaces, an employee who receives a disciplinary sanction is entitled to know why about the evidence, the specific conduct and the rule that was broken.

At PT Pegaunihan Technology Indonesia, asking that question turned out to be the most dangerous thing that Engly Heryanto Ndaomanu and Rieke Dyah Astiwi ever did.

They did not protest violently. They did not sabotage operations. They asked: where is the proof? And for that, they were punished again. And again. And again.

What followed was not a disciplinary process. It was a systematic campaign of retaliation one that escalated in direct proportion to how persistently the two employees exercised their legal rights.

THE QUESTION THAT STARTED EVERYTHING

August 2025. Both employees received First and Final Warning Letters (SPPT). The accusation: violating company regulations regarding badge ID usage. The consequence: immediate.

Their first response was not defiance. It was a question, the most basic question any person facing punishment has a right to ask:

"What exactly did we do wrong? Show us the evidence."

That question was never answered with evidence. Instead, it was answered with a label: bad attitude.

From that moment, a pattern emerged that would repeat itself across eight official forums over seven months. Every time the employees asked for proof, the company responded with a new form of punishment.

THE RETALIATION MATRIX: ACTION AND RESPONSE

WHAT EMPLOYEES DID	COMPANY'S RESPONSE
Asked: What is the evidence for our sanctions?	"Bad attitude" label applied immediately
Requested clarification on the legal basis of SPPT	Labeled as "aggressive rebels"
Attended Bipartite I with union representative (legal right)	Expelled from the official hearing room
Continued to formally protest the sanctions	Entire R&D department collectively punished
Raised concerns to management	Management start to intimidate supervisor
Sought accountability through legal channels	Accused of "spitting in the plate they eat from"
Attended mediation sessions with evidence	Sanctions upheld despite no counter-evidence
Requested overseas training as planned	Taiwan training opportunity cancelled
Continued working while case was unresolved	KPI downgraded to C, despite being called "Best Employees" by HR at mediation
Awaited promised performance bonus	6-month performance bonus revoked without legal basis or explanation

The pattern is unmistakable. In every instance where the employees exercised a legal right, to representation, to evidence, to due process, the company responded not with proof, but with punishment.

"BAD ATTITUDE" - THE LABEL THAT REQUIRES NO EVIDENCE

The first retaliatory tool deployed was the label. When Engly and Rieke asked for the evidentiary basis of their sanctions, they were told their manner of asking constituted a "bad attitude."

This is a tactic with a specific function: it shifts the subject of scrutiny from the company's conduct to the employee's demeanor. It transforms a legitimate legal question into a character flaw. And crucially, it requires no evidence to apply.

You cannot cross-examine a label. You cannot demand documentation for an attitude. That is precisely why it is used.

The "bad attitude" label was followed by "aggressive rebels", an escalation that reframed two employees filing legal complaints into a threat requiring containment.

COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT: AN ENTIRE DEPARTMENT HELD ACCOUNTABLE

Perhaps the most extraordinary retaliation in this case was not directed at Engly and Rieke personally. It was directed at everyone around them. The entire Research and Development department was subjected to collective punishment, colleagues who had no involvement in the dispute, who had filed no complaints, who had asked no questions, found themselves caught in the consequences of two coworkers exercising their legal rights.

Collective punishment for the exercise of individual legal rights is not discipline. It is intimidation, designed to ensure that colleagues become instruments of social pressure against those who speak up.

The message sent to the R&D department was clear: if your colleagues keep asking questions, all of you will suffer. Stand down, or everyone pays.

EXPELLED FROM A HEARING THEY WERE LEGALLY ENTITLED TO ATTEND

Indonesian labor law explicitly guarantees employees the right to union representation in bipartite hearings. This is not a privilege. It is a statutory right.

At Bipartite I, Engly and Rieke arrived with a representative from SPSI, the Indonesian Workers Union, as the law permits. What followed was not a hearing. It was a maneuver.

The company's HR: Riska Yuniarsih, Nora Morissa Sitompul, Ratih Joanda, and their manager, Narti, didn't engage with the employees. Instead, HR instructed the union representative to remove the employees from the room, and then, with only the union present, proceeded to present evidence unilaterally, framing the employees as guilty in their absence.

The union refused.

The SPSI representative rejected the one-sided evidence and stated plainly that the meeting could not be considered valid without the employees present. A hearing conducted without the people it concerns is not a hearing. It is a briefing designed to manufacture consent.

HR didn't expel the union. HR expelled the employees from their own hearing, and then tried to use the union as a witness to a verdict the employees were never permitted to contest.

The union held the line.

The tactic failed at Bipartite I.

They tried it again.

THE SAME TACTIC. A DIFFERENT AUDIENCE. A DIFFERENT RESULT.

After Tripartite Session III concluded at the Batam Disnaker office, the company didn't wait for the official process to run its course. Instead, HR approached the mediator privately, without notifying the employees, without their presence, and without any procedural basis for a separate meeting.

In that private approach, the company submitted evidence ex-parte: one side, one story, no opportunity for the other party to respond, challenge, or even know it had happened.

The union had refused to accept exactly this kind of submission at Bipartite I. Their reasoning was sound: evidence presented to one party in the absence of the other is not evidence in a dispute. It is lobbying.

The mediator saw it differently.

The ex-parte submission was accepted. The privately delivered evidence became the foundation of the official mediator's recommendation, a formal government document that would determine the outcome of the entire dispute.

At Bipartite I, the union protected the employees from a one-sided process. At Disnaker, the process had no such protection. The same tactic that failed against the union succeeded against the state mediator.

The mediator's own recommendation acknowledges that the company failed to present adequate proof in the official sessions. And yet the recommendation upholds the sanctions, built on evidence that was never tested, never challenged, and never seen by the employees until after the conclusion had already been written.

This is not a procedural irregularity. This is why the Ombudsman of the Republic of Indonesia has opened a formal investigation.

THE KPI THAT DEFIED REALITY

Of all the retaliatory measures in this case, the KPI downgrade may be the most difficult to explain away. At Tripartite Session III at the Batam Disnaker office, an official, witnessed, documented proceeding, the company's own HR representative acknowledged that Engly and Rieke were, in their words, the best employees in the department. Subsequently, both employees received KPI ratings of C.

Best employees. C rating. The same people. The same period. The only variable: they had the audacity to ask for evidence of their own sanctions.

A KPI rating is supposed to reflect performance. In this case, it appears to reflect something else entirely: the cost of non-compliance with an unjust sanction.

"SPITTING IN THE PLATE" - THE LANGUAGE OF LOYALTY ABOVE LAW

At various points in this dispute, the company framed the employees' legal complaints as a form of betrayal. The phrase used: accusing them of "spitting in the plate they eat from" is revealing.

Labor rights don't disappear because an employer frames their exercise as ingratitude. The law doesn't contain a loyalty exception.

But what makes it more than just rhetoric is the context in which it was delivered.

On October 27, 2025, the company's HR team cancelled their appearance at a scheduled Disnaker tripartite session, twenty minutes before it was supposed to begin. A government-facilitated mediation, formally scheduled, formally summoned. Cancelled via WhatsApp. Twenty minutes' notice.

Two days later, on October 29, HR representatives Riska Yuniar and Ratih Tjoanda appeared, not before a mediator, not before a legislator, not in any of the official forums they had been avoiding, but on TikTok. Dancing.

The caption that accompanied the video accused the employees of "spitting in the plate they eat from."

Read that sequence again. Too busy to attend a government mediation on October 27. Available to dance and publicly mock their own employees on October 29.

They could not find the time to face a mediator. They found the time to perform.

The phrase itself deserves examination. "Spitting in the plate they eat from" treats employment as a relationship of personal loyalty rather than a legal contract. It positions the exercise of statutory rights as ingratitude. It implies that the proper response to an unjust sanction is silence, not because silence is legally required, but because speaking up is culturally framed as disloyalty.

But the TikTok video wasn't merely a cultural slight. It was public retaliation, broadcast to an open audience, directed at employees who were actively pursuing legal remedies through official government channels. Employees whose names, cases, and circumstances were known. Employees who had no platform of equivalent reach to respond.

BatamInfo.co.id, covering the case, observed that the company's HR team appeared more professional on TikTok than in performing their actual function, noting that Human Resources, by definition, should be humane.

An HR department that cancels a government mediation with twenty minutes' notice and spends the next forty-eight hours dancing on social media has told you everything you need to know about how it views its legal obligations, and the people those obligations are meant to protect.

Labor rights do not disappear because an employer frames their exercise as ingratitude. The law does not contain a loyalty exception. And a TikTok video, however many views it receives, is not a substitute for showing up.

THE TAIWAN TRAINING: A FUTURE CANCELLED

Before this dispute began, Rieke Dyah Astiwi was scheduled to participate in a professional training program in Taiwan, a planned investment in her development as a researcher and her value to the department.

That opportunity was cancelled as the sanctions were applied. No explanation was provided as to why the dispute over a badge ID should have any bearing on a pre-planned professional development program.

The cancellation was not just a financial loss. It was a signal: challenge us, and we will reach into your future and take from it.

WHAT THIS PATTERN IS CALLED

There is a specific legal and organizational concept that describes what happened to Engly and Rieke: retaliation.

Retaliation occurs when an employer takes adverse action against an employee because that employee exercised a legal right, filing a complaint, requesting representation, seeking evidence, pursuing mediation. It is prohibited under Indonesian labor law and international labor standards.

The adverse actions in this case include: disciplinary labels, collective punishment of colleagues, expulsion from a legal hearing, KPI manipulation, cancellation of professional opportunities, and revocation of earned compensation.

Each of these actions, taken individually, raises serious legal questions. Taken together and taken specifically in response to the employees exercising their legal rights, they constitute a pattern that demands accountability.

The question is no longer only: were the original sanctions justified? The question is now: what happens in this company to employees who dare to ask that question?

THE BROADER IMPLICATION

Engly and Rieke are researchers. They are educated. They know which laws apply to their situation. They know which forums exist. They know how to document. Most workers don't.

In Batam's industrial zones, tens of thousands of workers face similar dynamics with far fewer resources. When they receive an unjust sanction, they do not ask for evidence. They have learned, from watching others, what asking costs.

The most effective suppression of labor rights is not the punishment of the one who speaks. It is ensuring that everyone watching learns not to.

This case is documented. It is on record. It is before the Ombudsman of the Republic of Indonesia. It has been reported by TribunBatam.id and published for international audiences.

But for every case that is documented, there are thousands that are not. Workers who received unjust sanctions, asked no questions, and lost everything in silence.

That silence is what PT Pegaunihan Technology Indonesia, and companies like it, depend on. It is time to make that silence more costly than speaking.

If workers cannot ask for proof of their own sanctions, what remains of due process in the workplace?