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Spanish dock workers clash with police
during strikes
Compiled by John Lapp
Feb. 24 (AGR)— Sixty people were hurt on Feb. 24 in two
separate violent clashes between dockyard workers and police in the
southern Spanish cities of Seville and Cadiz. The workers protested
almost empty order books. The incidents occurred at dockyards owned
by the state-run Izar group, whose drop in orders, the company blames
on Asian competition, the soaring euro rate and workers’ demands
for higher pay.
Hundreds of masked workers barricaded themselves in an Izar plant and
hurled rocks and home-made rockets at police in riot gear outside who
eventually stormed the plant. Another group of strikers set fire to
a van to block a road near Seville. In Cadiz protesters wearing masks
and hard hats built a series of roadblocks that blocked a main road
and bridge with burning tires, effectively shutting off traffic from
entering the city.
“About 3,000 workers were using the roadblocks as a way to draw
attention to their protest and their plight. The police were trying
to stop them and there were violent clashes,” said Ramon Diaz,
head of the main metalworkers’ union of Andalusia.
No one at Cadiz police or at national police headquarters in Madrid
was available for comment.
Diaz, whose organization belongs to the UGT, one of Spain’s two
big labor unions, said about 40 protesters suffered light injuries in
the clashes. Three of the workers were hospitalized after police used
rubber bullets and tear gas to break up the protest. Two workers were
hit in the eye and one had been shot in the testicles. Local government
officials said a dozen police were injured.
These incidents follow hot on the heels of protests last week at dockyards
in the Basque region of northern Spain and at Ferrol in the far northwestern
region of Galicia.
Miguel Angel Martinez, a spokesman for Izar, said negotiations between
the company and its staff over a new collective work contract had stalled
over the worker’s demand for a 6.8 percent pay raise.
“We’re calling for dialogue to resume. Violent demonstrations
are not the answer. We have proposed resuming talks through a mediator,”
said Martinez.
He said seven out of Izar’s 11 production centers were affected
by the strike, and 50 to 60 percent of the company’s total workforce
of 11,000 were taking part.
Diaz said almost all Izar workers were on strike, and they were joined
by many employees of the shipbuilder’s sub-contractors.
Izar, which builds both civil and military vessels, is Spain’s
only major shipbuilder. It delivered 11 ships last year, reducing its
losses to 30 million euros from 120 million euros in 2002.
Sources: Reuters, Associated Press, The
Australian, International Herald Tribune
Workers protest amid privatization scandals
By Kafil Yamin
Jakarta, Indonesia, Feb. 18 (IPS)— Employees of state-owned
companies have taken to the country’s highways and high courts
to protest layoffs and the sale of national enterprises to foreign investors.
In recent weeks, some 6,000 workers from the Indonesian aerospace company
PTDI have refused to be laid off. They have protested their three-month-old
suspension from work by staging day-and-night rallies at a South Jakarta
zoo and marching along the city’s main thoroughfares, snarling
traffic.
“We will stay here until we find justice,” said Arif Minardi,
leader of the PTDI trade union.
But if justice means fair compensation based on existing regulations,
their prospects appear dim: PTDI has gone totally bankrupt. The latest
rallies and marches follow numerous unsuccessful legal moves.
Over the last three years, PTDI, formerly the National Aircraft Industry
of Indonesia (IPTN), has undergone various cost-cutting measures. Workers’
welfare has steadily declined.
Meanwhile, in the Javanese city of Bandung, thousands of employees of
PT INTI, a state-owned maker of telecommunication equipment, face unemployment.
The government has announced plans to restructure the ailing company
that call for slashing the labor force to around 200 workers, from the
current 3,000.
In January, some 5,000 workers of PT Train Industrial Company (PT Inka)
staged a massive rally to protest planned layoffs following a series
of cuts to wages and benefits including transportation, housing, and
health care.
At the same time, members of the executive board at state telecommunication
operator PT Telkom marched to the Supreme Court to protest the company’s
sale to foreign investors.
“This company belongs to the state and we work for this company
because we want to serve the country. It would be a totally different
situation if this company were sold to foreign investors,” said
one executive.
Officials have said the privatization efforts are necessary because
state companies have been bleeding billions of rupiah, the local currency,
every month. The losses came to light only after the five years since
the ouster of President Suharto, who had ruled the country for three
decades.
Critics of privatization have countered that although the companies
have spent more money than they earned in revenue, they are being sold
off at unnecessarily low prices. The firms still have assets worth billions
of dollars and if these were consolidated and sold on fair terms, they
have said, enough hard currency could be raised to heal the country’s
festering fiscal crisis.
Analysts have said, however, that the government has pumped vast sums
into the companies over the past three years in a bid to prevent more
unemployment but its resources are now depleted and so it must offload
the firms.
It has enjoyed only limited success in selling off state enterprises.
While national satellite and natural gas firms have been privatized,
deals continue to elude major companies.
In addition to PT INTI and PTDI, these include Bank Mandiri, National
Plantation Companies (PTPN), Garuda Airlines, and National Logistics
(known locally as Bulog). These ailing companies remain under the receivership
of the Indonesian Bank Restructuring Agency (IBRA), set up after the
financial crises of 1998 to take hold of, restructure, and sell distressed
businesses.
The process has been mired in scandal, with political parties insinuating
themselves as deal brokers in a bid to raise money for their election
war chests.
Some news reports have alleged that major parties, including President
Megawati Sukarnoputri’s Indonesia Democracy Party of Struggle (PDIP),
the former ruling party Golkar, the United Development Party (PPP),
the National Awakening Party (PKB), and the National Mandate Party (PAN)
have competed and colluded to divide up potential deals and the resulting
spoils.
“The government is just deceiving us. They sell state companies
just in hopes of getting five trillion rupiah [$6.4 billion] to help
them win the upcoming election,” former president Abdurrahman Wahid,
whom Megawati replaced, told reporters last week.
A PDIP treasury official denied the allegation. “It is the state
that sells its assets. It is just a coincidence that the minister in
charge is from our party. How can the yields go to the party? Gus Dur
[Abdurrahman Wahid’s nickname] is just trying to make a sensation,”
said the official, Noviantika Nasution.
Officials also have come under fire for doing business with foreign
companies at the expense of struggling local firms. Last year, its purchase
of helicopters and warplanes from Russia was assailed because PDIP politicians
were said to have earned commissions on the deal — a clear conflict
of interest — and because local manufacturers said they could have
built the products.
“We can produce such warplanes and helicopters with the same quality.
If the government bought them from us, they wouldn’t have got commission.
But they were supposed to buy them from us, because this is their own
company,” said Wahid Saragih, a manager in PTDI’s quality
control division.
“If they had bought them from us, we could have survived for at
least three years. But they have thought only of themselves and their
party’s interests, instead of national interest,” he added.
Likewise, PT Inka has slashed work hours and wages in hopes of reducing
its overhead costs. This followed a decision by state-owned railroad
operator PT KAI to terminate orders to buy train cars made by PT Inka
and instead buy them from German and Japanese firms.
“PT Inka can produce train cabins of similar quality and we have
done so for decades. But because some politicians surrounding the president
want a portion of commissions from foreign exporters, the government
chose to import them,” said Dadap, a production manager at PT Inka.
“It is obvious that to them, political gains are much important
than the plight of PT Inka workers,” he added.
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