Fired aircraft firm workers go from zoo to ministry to camp
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Thousands of dismissed workers of PT Dirgantara Indonesia (PT DI), a state-owned aerospace company in Bandung, West Java, have refused to go home, and say they will stay for another two days in Jakarta despite having little confidence that the Central Committee for the Settlement of Labor Disputes (P4P) will rule in their favor.
The chairman of the biggest trade union in the company, the SP FKK, Arief Winardi, said that the workers would stay in Jakarta until the central committee made a final ruling on the case on Thursday.
"We won't go back home until we know for sure what is happening. We are waiting for the committee's decision, which we hope will be in our favor," he said after a hearing with the committee at the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration Building here on Tuesday.
The demonstration by the workers at the ministry caused major congestion along Jl. Gatot Subroto as the workers marched from Ragunan Zoo, where they spent the night on Monday, to the ministry.
Lawyer Johnson Panjaitan, who accompanied the workers during the hearing, said that both the committee and the management should be aware that the protests could turn violent.
"The workers have decide to stay in town for another two days to wait for the central committee's decision as PT DI management failed to show up during the hearing. This means we have to wait here until Thursday," he said.
The central committee hearing, presided over by Sabar Sianturi, was adjourned until Thursday to wait for management explanations on the many issues raised by the workers during the hearing.
"We have to adjourn the hearing to give the management a chance to give their side of the story. If management fails to show up on Thursday, we will make an ex parte decision based on the employees' arguments," he said.
During the hearing, Arief and Johnson argued against the management's decision to lay off 6,600 of the 9,350 PT DI workers and subsequently to dismiss them, claiming the company's financial difficulties were caused by corruption, inefficiency and mismanagement.
"A month after the company's financial problems were exposed by the media in July, the labor union submitted a proposal to save the company and avoid any dismissals, but the management ignored this. Meanwhile, the president director was holding extravagant meetings in four-star hotels in Bandung trying to find a solution to the problems," said Arief.
The central committee's decision will not be final as, besides the possibility of it being vetoed by the manpower and transmigration minister, both sides to the dispute are allowed to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Lawyer Kemalsyah Siregar, who represented management during the hearing, was unable to give detailed information on the company's financial difficulties, and failed to produce the management's written directions ordering the layoffs and dismissals.
The workers' are not overly optimistic of winning their case as Law No. 13/2003 allows ailing companies to dismiss their workers.
The Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA) said it had disbursed US$50 million (Rp 43 billion) to PT DI to provide severance payments to the dismissed workers.
The workers have said that they will only accept the dismissals if twice the amount of severance pay required by Chapter 156 of Law No. 13/2003 was provided to them.
In July, the management of DI decided to lay off 9,670 employees as the company was suffering continuing financial difficulties, and was unable to pay its debts to local and overseas creditors, and the workers' monthly salaries.
The government then intervened by asking the state minister for state-owned enterprises and IBRA to help solve the company's financial difficulties.
The company, which was a pet project of former technology minister B.J. Habibie in the 1980s, was plunged into financial crisis after the fall of president Soeharto in 1998. Under Soeharto, the company was regarded as a matter of national pride.
DI received an initial capital injection of Rp 1.6 trillion when it was established in 1986. However, it was never economic and had to subsidized by the state throughout the 1990s.
The post-Habibie administrations came to the conclusion that the firm was a financial burden on the state.
The aircraft company produced the CN-235 and N-250, which were much touted during the Soeharto days as shining examples of the progress made by the Indonesian industrial sector.