Former employees report Hotel Mulia to police

Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The management of the Hotel Mulia in Senayan, Central Jakarta, was reported to city police on Tuesday for allegedly locking up and forcing 31 employees to resign last February.

A lawyer representing the employees, Ines Thioren Situmorang, from the Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation (LBH Jakarta), said her clients were unlawfully detained in a room on the hotel's fifth floor for between three and 29 hours.

However, the Mulia's human resources director, Syavarina, denied the allegations.

"All of the accusations are untrue. We followed the procedures stipulated in the Labor Law. They were not locked up. We have documents proving that we followed the procedures," she told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

Ines said the hotel's management had accused the 31 employees of stealing money from payments made by guests to them. However, the allegations had not been proved.

"They were called into a room and forced to sign resignation letters. They were not allowed to leave unless they signed a letter. The room was guarded by security officers," Ines said.

She said that mineral water bottles had been thrown by security guards at two of her clients.

The 31 former employees, including bartenders, cashiers, front office staff, and room staff, had filed a complaint on Mar. 1 at their own initiative, but the police had only charged the hotel management with slander under Articles 311 and 335 of the Criminal Code, rather than with abduction under Article 333 of the code.

"They went to the police without a lawyer so they didn't know anything about the relevant articles. Later, they realized that the police were applying the wrong articles. We then decided to accompany them in filing a new complaint," Ines said.

The former assistant manager of the Mulia's Cafe Ferlin, Hasiholan Sinaga, who was also forced to sign a resignation letter, believed that the accusations laid against the employees was just a strategem by the hotel management to get rid of them without having to pay compensation.

"They just wanted us to resign without having to fire us so that they wouldn't have to pay compensation," she said.

Labor law stipulates that an employee has no right to claim compensation if he or she resigns voluntarily.

Ines said that Ferlin, who had worked for the hotel for eight years, only received Rp 15 million after resigning while Mardianto Yuliono, a former cashier, only received Rp 2.7 million after eight years of service.