Batam, Riau Islands – A legislator said wide gaps in both salaries and work benefits provided by PT. Drydock World Graha to its local and foreign workers had contributed to last week's Batam riot.
"There have been disparities in salaries and work benefits that foreign expatriates, permanent workers and casual laborers receive from their company," Arif Minardi said here on Sunday.
Minardi, chairman of the workforce working group of the House of Representatives Commission IV for manpower, said Thursday's riot was the accumulation of the workers' anger against the company's perceived injustice.
Speaking to reporters about the outcomes of his fact-finding trip to investigated the recent riot, he said the company paid its foreign workers – predominantly Indians – with Singapore dollar-standardized salaries, while the permanent Indonesian workers were paid in rupiah but their salaries were much lower than the expatriates. Casual workers were paid an hourly rate, he said.
Minardi said he found Drydock preferred to hire casual workers because it could avoid its obligation to pay for social welfare insurance and employee bonuses if they were laid off.
In addition to discriminative policies on salaries, the company's outsourcing workers did not receive any safety goods like the foreign and local permanent employees, he said, adding the Indonesians had to buy their own glasses and boots.
"They should buy all safety goods by themselves but the goods are always damaged every two weeks. We can imagine how much money that the outsourcing workers must spend for their safety," he said.
Nobody at Drydock in Batam would answer the phone on Monday morning.
Meanwhile, an Indonesian working for Drydock said the capabilities and skills of Indonesian and foreign employees were basically the same.
The only "value added" that the expatriates could speak English so that they could well communicate with the company owners. As a result, they were given better salaries and benefits, he said.
The minimum salaries of expatriates were 4,500 Singapore dollars (equals to around Rp 30 million) per month while the Indonesian workers with five or six years of working experience were only paid Rp 5-7 million. "This discriminative treatment has contributed to the anger and envy of local workers," he said.
The April 22 riot was allegedly sparked by a racist remark by an Indian expatriate at the company. There were no fatalities but four Indian workers were hurt in the brawl with local workers. One of them was reported to be in critical condition.
The police in Batam had named a wounded Indian worker, only identified as "G," a suspect because he was alleged to have caused the incident.
Though the situation has calmed, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has called on all sides to remain vigilant to prevent a recurrence of the incident.
On the day of the incident, thousands of angry workers vandalized and torched dozens of cars and set fire to a building.
One of the demonstrators, Disra, said the rally was triggered by a statement made by one of the company's foreign executives which the workers considered to be "insulting". "An Indian company executive called us, Indonesian workers, 'stupid' and this made us very angry," Disra said.