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)