Jkos Network Co (街口網絡) founder and chief operating officer Kevin Hu (胡亦嘉) on Tuesday said that he fired the founders and staff members of newly acquired iPeen (愛評網) because they had been absent from work or refused to fulfill their tasks.
Jkopay Co (街口電子支付), a subsidiary of Jkos Network, on March 21 acquired iPeen, which was previously owned by China’s Meituan Dianping (美團點評).
iPeen is one of the nation’s leading recommendation and lifestyle information portals.
Hu last week faced criticism for dismissing iPeen’s all 16 employees, including its three founders, less than one month after acquiring the company.
Former iPeen employees on Monday last week sought help from Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Yu Wan-ju (余宛如) and independent Taipei City Councilor Chiu Wei-Chief (邱威傑), accusing Hu of wrongful dismissal.
Hu on Tuesday said that he did not breach the Labor Standards Act (勞基法).
On April 1, he dismissed the three founders and five employees for being absent last month, and on April 2, he discharged another eight employees for their reluctance to finish their work, Hu told a news conference in Taipei.
“The three founders had no clock-in record from January to March, and the same went for some salesmen, so we had to let them go,” he said.
He asked the remaining eight employees to fulfill 34 services contracts that iPeen’s clients had paid for, but they refused, Hu said.
Their termination is in line with Article 12 of the act, which stipulates that employers can fire workers who are absent from work for three consecutive days without good reason or those who seriously contravene their labor contract or work rules, he said.
“I never intended to fire any iPeen employees when taking over the firm, as iPeen was a famous locally developed firm and its salesmen had good skills. I actually looked forward to collaborating with them before the dispute,” Hu said.
He said he was disappointed when the iPeen employees refused to work with him.
They were reluctant to share iPeen business information and have their computers tested for security reasons, Hu said.
The company paid its three founders an annual salary of NT$3.5 million (US$113,460) each, which was not reasonable and was not disclosed in the information for due diligence, he said.
“Their paychecks did not make sense to me, as iPeen had a negative net value and was losing about NT$1 million per month. So I asked them if it was possible to adjust their pay, but I did not force them to accept my proposal,” Hu said.
Hu said that iPeen would continue to operate and he is willing to have the 13 former staff members return to the company.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained