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)