ID Nugroho, Surabaya – Amid the increasing threat of mass layoffs in the province, business continued as usual Friday in the industrial areas of Rungkut, Surabaya, and in Sidoarjo, while dismissed workers who have yet to receive their normative rights remained at their workplaces to seek a settlement to their disputes.

No strikes or suspensions on operation were reported, despite thousands of workers being laid off in the past two months and thousands more at risk of following suit. The PT Philips Indonesia factory in Rungkut was no exception, despite recent grumblings over its dismissal early last month of ten permanent workers, replaced with contract-based workers.

The workers said they were confused by the lamp producer's decision, which, in addition to laying them off, barred them from returning to their workplace.

With the case now at court, the dismissed workers remain unpaid. They said they were trying to give a valuable lesson to the management that it should respect the normative rights of the dismissed workers because their case was still being processed.

After the Surabaya District Court turned down their complaint, the dismissed workers are now appealing to the Supreme Court, which they hope will uphold justice in their case.

"While the case is being processed, we have the normative right to receive our monthly salaries for January and likely this month, as well as other allowances we got while we were still employed," said Bambang Esoe Ariwibowo, one of the dismissed workers, referring to the 2003 Labor Law.

Bambang and his dismissed colleagues had filed a complaint with the city police over the Philips management's failure to pay their salaries in January, hoping the police would mediate in their dispute with the company over the suspended payments and other normative rights.

The workers also questioned the management's decision to outsource part of its main work to PT Madurasi Emas and PT Triple S, which they said was against the labor law. They also claimed their low performance evaluation scores had been orchestrated to require them to quit or be dismissed.

"The latter issue goes against Manpower Minister Decrees No. 69/2004 and No. 227/2003," Bambang said.

Philips general affairs manager Abdul Nadjib said he was unaware of the workers' police complaint, adding industrial relations at the company had remained harmonious.

"I don't know anything about the problems, including the suspended payments and the fake data on the workers' performance. I will study the case further and will later give a press conference," he told The Jakarta Post.

The dismissed workers from Philips are only a small part of the thousands of workers who have been dismissed and laid off in the province because of the recent minimum wage hike and the fallout from the global economic downturn.

On Thursday, around 2,000 workers from plywood factory PT Sejahtera Usaha Bersama in Jombang gathered to protest their unilateral dismissal and demand recognition for their normative rights, while 200 workers from furniture company PT Timur Selatan in Kediri filed a complaint with the local manpower office over their unilateral dismissal due to the minimum wage hike.

A drop in orders from the US and the EU, manifest in the decreasing volume of exports through Tanjungperak Port, has prompted employers to downsize their workforces, reduce working hours and sue the governor over the minimum wage hike.

Coordinator of the Alliance for Labor Rights (ABM) Jamaluddin said recently workers did not object to being laid off as a last resort, but the management should be transparent about their financial conditions, and the dismissals must be conducted in accordance with the law.