Thiess? ex-workers refuse severance pay agreed on in negotiations

Nearly all ex-workers of Australian mining contractor PT Thiess Contractors Indonesia (TCI) have refused to receive severance pay and other compensation packages offered by the firm despite the final agreement reached between their representatives and the company management, Kompas daily reported on Wednesday.

The ex-workers said they had actually demanded TCI to give them Rp5 billion (US$=Rp8,900), and questioned why their representatives had agreed to receive only Rp3 billion in their negotiations with TCI?s leaders in Jakarta on Nov 15. The Rp5 billion was to be divided up among the ex-workers, they said.

?We suspect that they had been bribed,? Nalompa Ompusungu, coordinator of the protesting ex-workers, said in Samarinda, East Kalimantan, on Tuesday. Three of them had been involved in negotiations with TCI?s leaders in Jakarta, Nalompa said.

Nalompa said they had in fact asked the three people to just quit the meeting if TCI refused to give them Rp5 billion.

The TCI management said in a press statement issued last Friday that the agreement they had reached with the workers was final, and that the agreement was in line with the rules issued by the national committee of labor dispute settlement (P4P).

The TCI management last year fired as many as 171 workers after they refused to return to work at its mining site in Pasir Regency in East Kalimantan. The people had gone on strike to demand the company to pay them for extra-working hours, which the company refused to fulfill.

The 171 ex-workers insisted that there was no legal basis for the TCI management to fire them although P4P ruled that their layoff was legal. Minister of Manpower Jacob Nuwawea vetoed the P4P decision, but the state administrative court overturned the minister?s decision.

Protracted negotiations between the ex-workers and the TCI management had also involved Pasir Regency council (DPRD II) members, East Kalimantan provincial government officials and provincial council (DPRD I) members, and House of Representatives (DPR) members.

TCI, the largest coal mining contractor in Indonesia, works for coalminer Kideco Jaya Agung in Batukajang village in Pasir Regency, East Kalimantan. It also operates in other provinces in Indonesia and currently has more than 4,000 workers. (*)