You’ve probably heard about the Twelve Cupcakes fiasco, in which the company underpaid its foreign workers.
Big yikes.
Now Twelve Cupcakes is planning to join the food workers’ union, which is affiliated with the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC).
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Jaime Teo Responds on Instagram
The former model took to Instagram on the day of her sentencing to “finally throw some light” on the case.
View this post on Instagram
She claimed that she was unaware of the company underpaying their foreign employees, stating that she “unfortunately signed off on many things without a second glance and left matters to the external agency that was engaged by HR.”
“I only learnt of what was going on when investigations started. As far as I know, we paid all our employees what was agreed with them,” she wrote.
Nevertheless, Ms Teo apologised for her negligence on the issue. She added that the “abusive comments and being misunderstood have been hard to bear”, and thanked those who continued to support her.
Pleaded Guilty to Ten Charges
On Tuesday (9 Mar), Ms Teo was fined S$65,000 for failing to prevent Twelve Cupcakes from underpaying their foreign workers.
She had originally pleaded guilty to ten charges under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act on 4 March 2021, according to The Straits Times. Another 14 charges were taken into consideration during her sentencing.
Ms Teo and her ex-husband, Daniel Ong, had founded the company in 2011. After their divorce in 2016, it was acquired for S$2.5 million by the Kolkata-based Dhunseri Group.
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When the company was taken over, it was discovered that seven employees, all of whom were S-Pass holders, were being underpaid.
Their fixed monthly salaries ranged from S$2,200 to S$2,600, but they only received around S$1,400 to S$2,050.
Six of them, working in customer service and sales roles, were underpaid from December 2016 to September 2018.
One of them was also underpaid their October and November 2018 wages.
As for the remaining employee, a pastry chef, he was underpaid his fixed monthly salary from January 2017 to September 2018.
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Most cruelly, the company tried to hide the fact that they were underpaying their workers. Initially, Twelve Cupcakes credited the slashed salaries to the employees’ bank accounts.
Later, they decided to pay them the full salary from May 2018, but the employees were forced to return a portion of their salary to the company.
Mr Ong’s case is still pending and he will return to court at a later date.
For each charge under the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act, an offender can be jailed for up to a year and fined up to S$10,000.
Feature Image: Instagram (@jmeteo)
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