Govt urged to tackle HongkongBank dispute
Govt urged to tackle HongkongBank dispute
JAKARTA (JP): The All Indonesia Workers' Union (SPSI) said yesterday that it had asked the Ministry of Manpower to settle immediately the dispute between Hongkong Bank and its employees, regarding the revision of a labor agreement.
"I asked the Director General of Industrial Relations and Control of the Ministry of Manpower this morning to tackle the internal dispute between the management and employees of Hongkong Bank," union chief Bomer Pasaribu told The Jakarta Post after receiving members of the bank's unit of SPSI at his office yesterday.
Some 500 employees of the bank staged their second day of peaceful protest yesterday over the management's failure to provide talks on the revision of their Collective Labor Agreement (CLA) which expired last December.
Carrying out their duty as usual, the employees hung from their bodies statements which aired their dissatisfaction toward the bank's management. Some of the papers read "negotiation, yes" and "please don't deviate from the CLA".
The deputy chairman of the company's unit of SPSI, Saepul Tavid, said that similar protests were also going on in the Hongkong Bank branches in Surabaya, Semarang, Medan, Bandung, and Batam.
According to Bomer, who is also head of the union's Trade, Bank and Insurance section, the bank's management overlooked yesterday a call by the Jakarta branch of the Ministry of Manpower to start negotiations on the new agreement.
Members of the company's unit of SPSI told Bomer yesterday that the company had canceled the negotiations five times since November.
Bomer said that according to the law, the CLA is valid for two years and should be revised at least three months before it expires. Revisions will deal with salary, facilities and job problems in rotation.
Concerning this issue, the Hongkong Bank employees had organized talks with their colleagues in other branches and they proposed a new agreement last November, he said.
Commenting on media reports that the postponement was due to the fraud which caused the bank Rp 97 billion ($43.6 million) losses earlier this month, Bomer said that there was "No connection between the fraud and the employees' problems."
The company should have conducted the negotiations in September of last year, he added.
The bank's management, contacted by The Jakarta Post, said that the bank only received a verbal agreement on Jan. 12 and it was entirely reasonable to have a ten-day period for final preparations by both parties.
"We will start negotiations as soon as possible and irrespective of the outcome, we have decided that the new CLA became effective on Jan. 1, 1996 and therefore the employees will not be deprived of their benefits," Leila Djafaar, the bank's public relations manager, said.(03)