HongkongBank blamed for dispute
JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation (YLBHI) is urging the Ministry of Manpower to properly enforce the labor laws on dismissal in connection with the firing of 200 HongkongBank employees.
In written statements made available to The Jakarta Post yesterday, the foundation's head of manpower department, Teten Masduki, and head of operational department, Munir, asked the ministry to postpone negotiations between the employees and the bank management which the bank proposed be held today.
"The plan on mass dismissal has never been discussed with the employees as required by chapter 2 of Law No. 12/1964," the foundation said.
Today's discussion will be arbitrated by the central board of the arbitration committee (P4P). The foundation said, however, that P4P is not in charge of arranging negotiations between employees and their management in such a dispute. "P4P is only entitled to give or to deny a company approval to dismiss its workers," the foundation said.
The bank stopped paying the disgruntled employees and has prohibited them from entering the premises. The bank has broken the law by doing so, the foundation claimed. Legal disputes must not be settled by the arbitrary committee, Munir and Teten said.
More than 200 workers of HongkongBank have been on strike since April following a deadlock in negotiations with the bank's management. The Manpower Ministry has acted as mediator in negotiations.
The employees said the main problem was that the management had yet to approve the new collective labor agreement, which deals with various issues involving the relationship between employees and management, and wages.
Valid strike
The Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH) has said that based on Indonesian Labor Law No. 22/1957 workers can go on strike after informing the manpower ministry following a deadlock in negotiations.
"Thus the strike is legal," Apong Herlina, the head of LBH's labor law department, said last month.
The director of Labor Standards at the Ministry of Manpower, Sabar Sianturi, has said that the strike is illegal. "The workers should not have gone strike as the negotiations had yet to end," Sianturi once said.
H.P. Radjagukguk, a senior lecturer at University of Indonesia's School of Law has said that both the management and the striking employees may have valid reasons for their actions. "But they have gone through the wrong procedures," the lecturer said.
According to Radjagukguk, the workers are correct in exercising their right to strike and the management has the right to dismiss them. "But they have not done so in accordance with legal procedures," he said.
The foundation rebuked yesterday the HongkongBank management for its actions against the employees.
"We want the management to reinstate the employees' rights and give them their salaries as long as the P4P has not yet decided on their dismissal," the YLBHI said. (sur)