Singamip workers take their complaint to DPR

JAKARTA (JP): Some 200 workers of the PT Singamip Jaya Enterprise Electronic company on the third day of their strike yesterday expressed their grievances to the House of Representatives.

Meeting with no less than eight legislators from the Indonesian Democratic faction (PDI), the workers listed their demands, which included a daily food allowance of Rp 1,500 (57 U.S. cents), and transportation annuity of Rp 1,000.

The workers' spokesman, Adil Cahyono, said since 1991 they were only given a coupon worth Rp 100 for their food allowance and that the company had not provided transportation money.

Other demands included easier permission for vacations and menstrual leave.

"In our company there's no menstrual leave," Nurtini, one of the mostly young women who participated in the demonstration, told The Jakarta Post yesterday.

The company, located near Bogor, West Java, has a labor force of about 3,500 and produces electrical components which it supplies to Sony.

The workers were also demanding the right to form a union free of interference from management.

"We want it to be free from the collusion of the businessmen," Adil Cahyono said.

Workers yesterday also claimed to legislators that they were treated unfairly. Ujang, a worker from the company's mechanics division, said he was fined Rp 2,000 because he forgot to wear his identification card at work.

Separately, an executive at the company, identifying himself as Shaffiq, told the Post over the phone that the company welcomed the workers desire to form a union and that it was the workers themselves who had failed to do so on their own accord.

He argued that the strike was really being incited by Agus Ponindar, a worker who had been discharged by the company for his irresponsibility at work.

Shaffiq, the company's production manager, further refuted earlier reports that 2,000 workers had joined the strike, contending that only a dwindling 200 had walked off the assembly line on the first day. (03/mds)