On Aug. 18, it was reported that the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (TAFEP) is looking into an incident where a part-time promoter was allegedly told by Tangs department store to immediately remove her hijab at work.

In response to queries from Mothership, Tangs said that it intends to allow all employees — including front liners — to wear religious headgear while working.

The spokesperson said: "Our corporate office colleagues, and back of house employees wear religious headgear, and we plan to standardise this practice across the stores for all."

The U-turn in company policy comes after an outcry about the donning of headscarf surfaced publicly.

Insistence on removal of hijab

On Jul. 29, a business owner — who only wanted to be known as Ms. Chin — posted about an incident that involved Tangs staff allegedly telling her part-time promoter to remove her hijab at work.

Chin wrote in the post: "In today’s context, their restrictions and bullying behaviour is totally unacceptable. We need to call them out to make the necessary change."

Chin questioned some of the rules that the part-time promoter had to follow if the business wanted to continue to have a pop-up booth in Tangs.

These restrictions included a rule against having dyed hair, and disallowing any form of religious headgear to be worn while working in the store.

Tangs had approached Chin initially

Chin told Mothership that she was initially approached by Tangs to do a pop-up booth in their store from July 27 to Aug. 13.

On July 29, her part-time employee, Nurin Jazlina Mahbob, was approached by two managers from Tangs, who allegedly told her to take off her hijab immediately.

According to Chin, Tangs had told her that the rationale behind removing her hijab was for "professionalism-sake".

Chin said: "I really didn't get it, so I just said, what does tudung and professionalism got to do together? It doesn't mean wearing a tudung means you're not professional."

Tangs, however, said it would "never" ask anyone to immediately remove their religious headscarf.

It said: "As a company with a diverse, and multi-racial workforce, we are respectful of cultural and religious practices and requirements and asking anyone to remove their religious headscarf immediately is offensive, and we would never do so."

Allegedly did not let promoter speak up

Chin said that the two managers did not let Nurin speak up and kept insisting that she remove her hijab.

"I think if I didn't speak up for her at that point in time, I think Nurin would have been forced to remove her tudung, which I really think is unfair for her," said Chin.

But the issue of attire was apparently brought up beforehand.

The spokesperson for Tangs said that it usually has an onsite partner induction process, where they provide "dress code, decorum and other useful guidelines to personnel of our partners".

However, Chin said that these guidelines were not made clear to her.

She said that there was only a casual briefing for her part-timers on the first and second day on having to wear all-black attires and not being allowed to wear earrings.

Tangs acknowledged that there was a lapse in this instance.

It said: "In this instance, unfortunately, it was our lapse as we did not follow our standard operating procedure. We have looked into this and remedial action has been taken."

Eventually, the managers let Nurin keep her hijab on for the rest of the day, but about an hour after Chin left Tangs to attend to other matters, she received a WhatsApp message from her merchandiser at Tangs.

Having to clear the booth

Chin said the merchandiser told her to tell Nurin to remove her hijab, and also told Chin that she should not have dyed hair.

Eventually, their text conversation ended when the merchandiser told Chin to clear the booth by 8.30pm that night.

Tangs said: "Given subsequent verbal exchanges that we prefer to keep confidential, we had to come to the unfortunate decision to part ways at the end of the business day."

Chin said that beyond the conversation with the managers and the WhatsApp conversation with the merchandiser, the only communication she had with the department store was an email two weeks later.

In these exchanges, Tangs did not give a specific reason as to why she had to clear the booth.

An important issue for the community

Since the post was made public, TAFEP has said that it is looking into the incident.

TAFEP said that employers are expected to abide by the principles of fair employment practices set out in the Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices.

It said: "Religious attire should generally be allowed at workplaces, unless employers have uniforms or dress code requirements that are suited to the nature of their work, or for operational and safety reasons. Such requirements should then be communicated and explained clearly to employees as well as job applicants."

In response to queries from Mothership, TAFEP pointed to Senior Minister of State for Manpower Zaqy Mohamad's Facebook post about the issue.

Zaqy wrote in the post: "To me, this is an important issue for the community. Workplaces are an important part of the common space where people interact and work with one another regardless of cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds."

"Employers should be thoughtful of the policies and practices they set, including inclusivity at their workplaces. I also urge employers to regularly review these policies and take into consideration the views and sensitivities of their stakeholders, such as their employees, customers and business partners."

He added: "TAFEP shared with me that another major retail store had reviewed its uniform policy to include headgear after receiving feedback from its stakeholders. As for the current case, TAFEP has reached out to the parties involved and is currently looking into this matter."

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Top image via Melanie Lim.