Ex-employees threaten to sue Caltex over pension payment

Eighty three former employees of PT Caltex Pacific Indonesia in Jakarta have threatened to sue the company for not paying their pension money in full during the period between April and September in 1998, Riau Pos reported on Friday,.

Anmeddy Darwin SH, a lawyer representing the oil giant's 83 former employees, said that his clients decided to bring the company to the court because the oil giant did not show any good faith in settling the payment.

According to him, Caltex had not included allowance components in the calculation of the pension payment to the 83 pensioners, and this had caused a cut in their salaries to between Rp 40 million and RP 50 million to each of them.

"In total, the cut has caused a loss to about Rp 3.5 billion to pensioners," he said.

Caltex's communications and media relations manager, Poedyo Oetomo, said that the pensioners' threat to bring the company to the court had no legal bases.

He said that the company's regulation which stipulated that allowance as integral part of the pension payment began effective in October, 1998 while the pensioners demanded the inclusion of the allowances for the payment before the enactment of the regulation. (*)