Plywood Workers Demonstration

Duta Rendra Mulya is a plywood company, a subsidiary of the notorious Salim group of Indonesia. Despite the huge scale of the overall company, DRM is in trouble for keeping their employees from their paychecks, and it has started since 2005.

Aside from the monthly paycheck, they also demanded their health care, social security, retirement and insurance payment. The employees said that one of their co-worker have to pay for their own hospital bill for working related accident, then got caught in debt because he didn't have enough money to pay for it since the company can't pay his salary.

In the housing facility provided by the company, there has been no electricity for a couple of months, children having hard time studying, and it also resulting in the cut of water supply, since to get water people have to rely on electric pump. The employee have to sell steel just to keep on with their basic needs.

At about midday the workers representatives entered the building, and negotiated over the matters for several hours. At about 2 pm, print outs were distributed, but the workers were not satisfied with the result of 50 % of service money offered by the company, they demanded 100 %. Until afternoon they settled with 80 % of service money for about 892 workers which the company promised to discuss with the management in Jakarta and to deliver the payment by 7 November 2009.

It was alomost afternoon when the crowd dispersed peacefully, determined to continue the crusade that has been going for three months. The coordinators told them to get back to work the following day, fulfilling their duties.