KPC says it won't surrender to pressure from employees
Monday, July 3 2000 - 03:00 AM WIB
The giant coal mining company in East Kalimantan province PT Kaltim Prima Coal (KPC) said that it would not surrender to the pressure launched by its protesting employees.
KPC president Grant Thorne said at the weekend that the management would not fulfill the demands of the protesting employees including to raise salaries.
Thorne was quoted by the local Kaltim Post daily as saying that the welfare-related demands had been settled by the local P4D labor dispute settlement committee in February.
He said that the management would only be ready to negotiate over new demands.
But he added that before a negotiation could start, the employee must stop its demonstration which had halted production.
He also said that the demonstration was also illegal because it had violated the existing procedure.
Some 200 employees out of the 2000 KPC employees had staged a demonstration since June 14 at the mining site. The protesters had also controlled some key production facilities, causing the stop production since the past 15 days. The demonstration was made after the P4D labor dispute settlement committee dropped their demand for KPC to raise salary.
The protesters were being backed by the radical SBSI labor union, whose chief Muchtar Pakpahan visited the protesters recently and tried to negotiate with KPC.
The halt in production had caused the company to be unable to deliver coal products to its foreign buyers. The company has also suffered some US$2.6 million, while the government has suffered some $4 million in the form of royalty and taxes.
Thorne urged the government to intervene to resolve the problem. "We don't want to see a physical conflict," he said.
Separately, East Kutai Regent Awang Faroek said that his administration was ready to play a mediator role between KPC and the protesting employees.
He was quoted by the Kompas daily as saying that the problem must be immediately resolved because all parties had been badly affected including the company, employee and the local government.(*)