Workers strike forces Shangri-La to move guests
Workers strike forces Shangri-La to move guests
JAKARTA (JP): The management of the five-star Shangri-La Hotel
had to evacuate their room guests to another hotel and
temporarily close most of its facilities, including its bar and
restaurants, following an all out strike by its workers on
Friday.
The strike by some 500 staff, mostly on-duty workers like
those from the Food & Beverage and Room Service units, started at
midday over a prolonged dispute concerning several matters,
particularly their service charges, pension fund, and the
suspension of the hotel workers' union.
"We plan to stay and sleep in the hotel's lobby until our
demands are met by the management," the union chairman Halilintar
Nurdin told The Jakarta Post.
Head of the hotel's public relations department Romy
Herlambang said: "If both sides fail to settle the problems,
we'll cancel our New Year's Eve party."
She added that the hotel had also started turning away
potential guests.
According to Romy, the strike had forced the hotel to ask all
of its guests to move to the Mandarin Hotel near the Hotel
Indonesia traffic circle.
"We have had to move them since we could not serve them in
accordance with the Shangri-La's standards," she said.
"As of now, there are 20 guests who are still here," she
added, but refused to disclose the precise number of evacuated
guests.
Mandarin hotel on-duty manager Geoffrey said that the Shangri-
La had asked for 40 rooms for its guests due to the strike.
"But there have only been 10 rooms occupied by the Shangri-La
guests so far. Probably, the remaining guests have picked other
hotels to stay in," Geoffrey told the Post at 9:40 p.m.
The 32-story Shangri-La on Jl. Karet Pasar Baru Timur has 668
rooms and suites.
Halilintar said his union had 900 members out of the hotel's
total workforce of some 1,150.
During the first day of the strike on Friday, the Korean
Embassy held a New Year fiesta in the hotel's ballroom. The
evening party went smoothly.
"They were served by staff from the administration section,
such as from the human resources department (HRD) and the sales
and accounting department," said one of the HRD staff, Nina, who
acted as a waitress for the evening.
According to Halilintar and his fellow workers, they have at
least 12 demands that they want the hotel management to agree to.
They include a pension fund, which has yet to be provided,
that service charges be distributed equally, not based on
seniority and job level, a THR (Idul Fitri/Christmas allowance)
worth four times their monthly salary, and the lifting of
Halilintar's suspension.
Halilintar has been suspended since Friday based on a letter
signed by the hotel HRD manager, Novianita. Two days earlier,
Novianita in a notice posted up in various parts of the hotel
ordered the workers to take down all of the posters they had
erected, or they would be sanctioned.
When asked for a further explanation, Romy said "No comment".
"There has been a dialog between our management and the
workers, but no decision has been made," she added.
But "this strike is really disrupting business in our hotel,"
she said.
It would appear that Friday's strike is the first one in the
capital which has led a hotel's management to evacuate its room
guests. (dja/bsr)