Dedicated worker fights for justice
JAKARTA (JP): Joko, a 51-year-old father of four, has been roving around not knowing what else to do to feed his family after he lost his job in a furniture company in Tanah Abang last month.
He became jobless when Suka Utama, where he had dedicated 20 years of his life, went bankrupt and was sold. He was a contract worker up until he was dismissed.
"The problem is my employer fired me just like that... without giving me a rupiah in severance pay. I have tried to see Pak Yohanes Junaidi (his former employer) to talk it over, but he has refused to meet me," he said.
Now Joko, who used to earn about Rp 300,000 ($32) a month, intends to spend several days at home before moving to a relative's house to get advise on how to claim his severance pay which he reckoned to reach over Rp 4 million. He will also seek advise on where to find a new job.
On a manpower ministry official's suggestion, he has solicited the help of the ministry's Central Jakarta office. The office, he said, summoned Junaidi for a dialog but the former employer had yet to turn up.
On Friday, Joko met again with an official at the Central Jakarta ministry office to beg him to speed up the process -- only to hear the bureaucrat preach to him on the complicated bureaucratic procedures he had to carry out.
Joko did not give up. He took along a manpower official to Junaidi's home in Kebon Jeruk, West Jakarta, to press his demand.
To his astonishment, Junaidi told him he would never give him a cent on the grounds that Joko had failed to settle the dispute by way of musyawarah (deliberation for consensus) in the first place and that he had prepared himself for a legal battle instead.
"He should keep going with his legal route. If the Agency on Labor Disputes decides in favor of him, I will pay him no matter how much it is," Junaidi told The Jakarta Post.
Junaidi, who bluntly admitted he knew nothing about labor law, said he did not mean to fire Joko and, instead, offered him to work in a shop belonging to one of his relatives. But Joko insisted that he was dismissed and therefore entitled to severance pay.
The case will be referred to the labor dispute agency. The battle may take weeks or even months before Joko can see what the long wait may bring.
Joko is one of countless workers who have been dismissed without proper severance by their employers since Indonesia began to sink into deep economic crisis last July.
The Indonesian Women's Association for Justice (APIK), in a statement in connection with the international observance of Labor Day on May 1, noted that many employers used the economic crisis to force through wage cuts on their employees or to justify withholding their wages.
APIK called on the government to do more to stop employers from arbitrarily dismissing employees, to take action against companies who exploited workers and to punish owners who closed down companies, resulting in large numbers of jobs lost, without going through proper procedures.
Chairman of the Federation of Indonesian Workers Union Bomer Pasaribu warned last week that as far as labor was concerned, the worst had yet to come.
He predicted that the most difficult time would occur this year because the fuel and electricity price increases would deal a heavy blow on industries.
"The increase in fuel and power prices will jack up this year's inflation rate to about 60 percent," he said. "Bank Indonesia's increasing interest rates will put heavy pressure on liquidity that will lead companies to the brink of collapse."
The problem will lead to unstoppable mass dismissals, he warned. (pan)