1,300 Mayora workers continue strike
1,300 Mayora workers continue strike
JAKARTA (JP): More than 1,300 workers of an export-oriented
candy and cookie producer in Tangerang continued their strike for
a fifth day yesterday, demanding an increase in wages and other
allowances.
A number of military personnel were deployed at the plant at
Jl. Daan Mogot Km. 19 in Batu Ceper to help the company -- PT
Mayora Indah -- force the workers to go back to work, the
workers' lawyer Yuwana Berlianti of the Jakarta Legal Aid
Institute said.
According to Berlianti, one of the workers was injured during
a clash with soldiers.
"The soldiers even searched the workers' boarding houses,"
Berlianti told The Jakarta Post.
The workers, she said, started the rally at the plant on
Wednesday.
The workers want the company to increase their daily wage from
Rp 5,200 to the official minimum wage of Rp 5,700.
"The company has paid the workers below the government
standard since 1992," Berlianti said.
She said the workers also demanded the company raise their
transportation allowance from Rp 550 a day to Rp 2,000 a day.
They also urged the company to increase their daily meal
allowance from Rp 600 to Rp 2,000, she said.
In the company of Berlianti, 40 workers' representatives met
the company's deputy personnel manager Harry at the plant
yesterday.
During the meeting, Berlianti said, the company's management
refused to discuss the workers' demands, saying the matter had
been settled in a tripartite discussion among the workers'
representatives, the company's executives and officials of the
local office of the Ministry of Manpower on Friday.
"But the workers said their demands were not discussed during
Friday's meeting at the local Ministry of Manpower office," she
said.
The workers, she said, plan to meet the company's personnel
manager Alang at the company's head office in Tomang, West
Jakarta, to further discuss the dispute.
The company's executives could not be reached for comment
yesterday.
A telephone operator at the plant confirmed the workers were
striking but refused to give further details.
The company's senior accountant, David Lukas, earlier said
that Mayora, half of whose products are shipped overseas, had
already applied the new government regulation ordering companies
to raise their employees' minimum wage 15 percent from Aug. 1.
"We already applied it this month, or a month earlier than the
government's suggestion," he told the Post. (jun)