Flight attendants to get severance pay

JAKARTA (JP): Bouraq and Mandala airlines agreed yesterday to give severance pay to dozens of dismissed female flight attendants in line with legal requirements, the employees' lawyers said.

Christina Rini Yuliarti from the Legal Aid Institute said Mandala Airlines agreed to pay severance pay to the 40 women at between Rp 6 million (US$410) and Rp 16 million each.

The agreement was reached after Mandala president Veronica Subarkah met the flight attendants at the company's office on Jl. Garuda, Central Jakarta, yesterday.

"The company also agreed to pay the flight attendants' salaries which had been cut by 50 percent since January," Rini told The Jakarta Post.

She said flight attendants would meet once again on Monday with Mandala officials to press their demand for flight fees outstanding since February.

The flight attendants' spokeswomen, Wahyuni Widi Astuti said the women, who were told about their dismissal on June 9, initially demanded the company revoke the plan.

"We finally agreed to be dismissed after we were told that the company would go bankrupt by September if the rupiah continued plunging against the U.S. dollar," Widi said.

She said the flight attendants' salaries were between Rp 300,000 and Rp 1.3 million a month.

They could have earned between Rp 1.5 million and Rp 3 million had the company not slashed their salaries by half in January, she said.

The flight attendants are hopeful Mandala will pay their outstanding flight fees of about Rp 1.5 million each.

Wearing their yellow-white-blue uniforms, the women seemed happy with the decision yesterday. One said she would use the money to buy a new air conditioner.

Separately, PT Bouraq Indonesia Airlines agreed to give severance pay to its 21 contract flight attendants of between Rp 1.5 million and Rp 3 million each, the women's lawyer Surya Chandra of the Legal Aid Institute said.

Surya said Bouraq had initially refused to give the severance pay on the pretext that the stewardesses were not permanent employees.

Bouraq terminated working contracts with 21 of its 50 stewardesses on March 1, he said.

Quoting an article in a manpower ministerial decree, Surya said contract workers were entitled to severance pay, the amount of which depended on their length of employment with the company.

Surya said his clients' contracts were valid until next year.

The flight attendants had complained to the Committee for Labor Dispute Settlement of the Ministry of Manpower about their dismissal. (jun)