600 factory workers go on strike for timely pay

TANGERANG (JP): About 600 factory workers of a glassware manufacturing company went on strike yesterday in front of the plant on Jl. Daan Mogot, Batuceper.

They demanded that their employer, PT Opal Indah Glass Industry, stop delaying the payment of their monthly wages, hand over immediately their social insurance fees and improve the daily menu.

The workers blockaded the entrance gate at 10 a.m. and barred dozens of trucks from entering, which had come to load containers of the company's products to be shipped overseas.

According to the workers, the strike was held after getting unsatisfactory responses from the local workers' association and their employer, who they said, has delayed the monthly payment their salaries for many months.

One of the workers said that wages for August, for instance, have been delayed to Sept. 6, after several changes.

"The company has even planned to postpone our August wages until Tuesday," he said.

"Knowing that the wages will be suspended, we all stopped working and went on strike," said another protester.

The other reason for staging the strike was the boring daily menu and the unsatisfactory services they received from state-run hospitals and clinics due to their company's delay in paying the fees to PT Astek, the state-owned worker's social insurance company, said the workers.

The workers did not give details about the menu. However, they did say that the company had not paid the insurance fees for almost a year but kept cutting 2.5 percent from employees' wages every month.

The company's financial manager, Sanaroh, told reporters that the suspension of the workers' wages and the insurance fees was mainly due to the firm's poor production performance over the past six months.

Sanaroh admitted that the company had not paid the monthly insurance fees for their workers since August last year because the firm has not had enough money.

"According to the law, the Astek insurance fee equals 12.5 percent of a worker's monthly salary. Of that amount, 10 percent should be subsidized by the company and the remaining 2.5 percent cut from the worker's wage," said Sanaroh, who was accompanied by the local workers' association chairman, M. Noor.

However, Sanaroh's explanation differed from that of the company's president, F.S. Santosa.

According to Santosa, his company planned the postponement deliberately, in order to change the payment date from the end of each month to the first week of each month.

"Paying the wages at the end of the month creates long queues at banks because there are so many companies paying their workers at the same time," he argued.

"Moreover, taking money from banks at the end of the month is risky because they are staked out by robbers," said Santosa.

He also denied the workers' complaint that his company has yet to pay the Astek insurance, and rejected Sanaroh's remarks that the company is currently suffering from a poor production performance.

"Our factory is running as usual and there's no reduction in our production," said Santosa.

The workers continued their strike until the evening. There has been no sign that the company will meet their requests. (41/bsr)