Plywood workers claim back pay
Plywood workers claim back pay
JAKARTA (JP): Approximately 40 workers from a plywood company in Maluku sought help from the House of Representatives yesterday to resolve a dispute with the management over claims for unpaid overtime for the 1991-94 period.
The workers, who said they represented 6,000 employees of PT Artika Optima Inti, told legislators of Commission VI that they have only just learned that they had been deprived of their full rights.
The company, which operates a plywood factory on Seram Island, is owned by the Djajanti business group.
The workers said that the management had apparently secured a concession from the Ministry of Manpower in 1991 allowing them not to pay the workers their full overtime entitlement.
By law, overtime pay, which can reach as much as double the normal pay, should be based on basic wages plus allowances. But the company, claiming financial difficulties, was allowed to calculate overtime pay based on basic wages alone.
This official consent and the details of their entitlement were never disclosed to the workers and they only learned of it when a House member visited the plant and talked about the issue to the workers.
Helmi said the workers were deprived of wages amounting to between Rp 40,000 and Rp 100,000 a month because of the government dispensation.
"We ask you to approach the Minister of Manpower to annul this dispensation, which has been used to manipulate our rights," Helmi Weno, one of the 40 delegates, told the legislators.
The workers said that they had gone to the local representative of the All Indonesian Workers Union and also the provincial office of the Ministry of Manpower, to seek help.
The PT Artika office in Jakarta told The Jakarta Post yesterday that as far as the company was concerned, all the problems regarding the overtime had been resolved.
The workers however said that the company had only made good on the overtime payments for the period between July 1994 and December 1994.
Oedijanto, one of the legislators who met the workers, supported the company's position, saying that the employees' case had already been invalidated by time.
He recalled the management saying that it was the workers who volunteered to do overtime when the management was considering recruiting more workers to cope with the increasing workload.
The company agreed to employ two shifts without recruiting new workers, but had asked for the dispensation from the Ministry, Oedijanto said.
The workers also reported that the management has arbitrarily fired at least 100 workers and suspended 270 others without consulting the local arbitration office of the Ministry.
The workers said they would not return home "until we get a positive response." They said they have each spent Rp 135,000 on their trip to Jakarta. (anr)