Siemens workers ask for their jobs back

M. Taufiqurrahman, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Triandi assumed that he had already been working for PT. Siemens Indonesia for seven years when he received the heartbreaking news in 2001 -- he had lost his job.

Worse still, it turned out that he had never actually been employed by Siemans as a full-time driver.

He said that he sent an application to Siemens, and its human resources officials had interviewed him before he took the job. In reality, however, he was employed by a labor supply company from which Siemans hired a number of blue-collar workers.

Now, there are about 80 people like Triandi who have been laid off from Siemens before they had the chance to become full- timers. Most of them are security guards and drivers.

"The management of Siemens chooses to hire workers through third parties -- labor supplier companies -- so that it doesn't have to offer them promotions.

"If it still needed them, it just extended the contracts with the labor suppliers," Triandi said, adding that most of the blue- collar workers never signed an employment contract after their three-month probation period was over.

There were three companies that supplied blue-collar workers for Siemens. They were PT. Beton Cilegon Agung (BCA), PT. Hardy&Kee Engineering and PT. Inovasi Teknik.

Syukron, a representative of a labor union in the company, said that the absence of employment contracts prevented the workers from exercising their rights.

"When we asked for the Siemens management to fulfill its obligations, it said that Siemans had nothing to do with us as it was the labor supply companies who hired us.

But if we called on the labor supply companies to meet our demands, they said we should talk to Siemens directly. It was frustrating," said Syukron, who was laid off two years ago after serving the company for seven years as a driver.

To make things worse, Syukron alleged that the labor supply companies were also engaged in some irregularities, such as manipulating the taxes and insurance premiums paid by workers.

"We were never shown our income tax slips, although we asked for them time and time again," he said, adding that BCA, one of the labor supply companies, only paid 0.24 percent of the workers' wages as insurance premiums, while in fact Siemens had set the figure at 1.74 percent.

A lawyer from the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute, Asfinawati, said that the workers' problems resulted from the unfair practice of labor outsourcing.

"According to Minister of Manpower Decree No. 203/1999, labor outsourcing is illegal, but the new manpower law legalizes it, she said.

She called on the government to prohibit labor outsourcing, given the misery it inflicted on workers.

"We also regret the fact that the recently-endorsed manpower law legalizes this inhuman practice," Asfinawati said.

Separately, a staff member from the human resources department of Siemens, who requested anonymity, said that there was no labor dispute in the company.

A corporate communications officer also pledged on Monday to deliver a statement to The Jakarta Post, but as of press time, no further information had been received.