Standard Chartered Bank sit-in continues
Standard Chartered Bank sit-in continues
JAKARTA (JP): Hundreds of sales promotion workers for Standard Chartered Visa credit cards continued a sit-in protest for the third consecutive day yesterday, asking for commission they say is owned to them by Standard Chartered Bank.
The protesters, part of the 2,300 employees of private sales promotion company Jet 2000, gathered on the ground floor of the Standard Chartered Bank headquarters on Jl. Sudirman in Central Jakarta and remained there until late in the evening.
The workers called on the bank to pay their commission fees totaling hundreds of millions rupiahs for about 120,000 customer application forms they have collected over the past month.
A spokeswoman for Standard Chartered Bank said yesterday that the payment to cover the commissions for the sales workers, totaling Rp 300 million (US$131,868), was made to Jet 2000 on Nov. 9 through the firm's account with the bank.
"We have nothing to do with the card promotion representatives. It is Jet 2000 that is directly responsible for the payment," Rina Jamal told The Jakarta Post and Kompas yesterday evening.
Standard Chartered has a deal with Jet 2000 only, she said.
Jet 2000 Director Sambas Effendi appeared for the first time yesterday to meet with five representatives of the protesters the offices of Standard Chartered.
A number of police officers were seen on guard in front of the meeting room.
The meeting was expected to last until midnight.
The protesters told the Post that they had contracts with the bank which stated that would receive payment 21 working days after the application forms had been processed.
They said the contracts state that the card promotion workers will be paid Rp 500 (U.S. cents 22) for each application form collected and a further Rp 25,000 (US$11) if the application is approved.
The bank had told the protesters before that only 2,825 of a total of about 120,000 applications had been approved.
One protester said she was skeptical about the bank's claim to have transferred the money to Jet 2000.
"Why did the bank transfer Rp 300 million to Jet 2000? It sounds silly, since the amount includes the payment for the unprocessed documents," said the protester.
Other protesters urged Sambas, their employer, to clarify the situation.
"All we need is our commission, which is our right," said another protester.
Most of the workers said that they had spent between Rp 300,000 and Rp 450,000 to find customers for Standard Chartered Visa credit cards.
"I've spent Rp 300,000 to collect 400 customers during the 45 days working as sales for the credit cards," said one protester. "But I haven't been paid anything for the work."
The workers said that they have been paying transportation costs and daily meal expenses with their own money since the sales promotion campaign for the credit cards was launched on Oct. 2. (bsr)