Farouk Arnaz & Nurfika Osman, Jakarta – Members of a labor union at state electricity utility PT Perusahaan Listrik Negara have filed a criminal complaint against the company's board of directors over claims of union-busting.
PLN workers' union chairman Ahmad Daryoko filed the complaint on Monday with the National Police, accompanied by legal representatives from the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH).
It claims PLN president director Dahlan Iskan unfairly punished several union members who had opposed the firm's decision to increase electricity rates on the first of this month.
"It seems that the board of directors did not take to kindly to our position on this issue and has begun alienating us," Ahmad said.
Management had rescinded several of the facilities the workers previously enjoyed, including a fax machine and telephones. The board had also set up a new trade union, ostensibly to undermine the existing one.
Ahmad said the treatment of unionized workers was particularly harsh because they had also called for a judicial review of the new electricity law that opens up the power market to private sector competition.
The law is aimed at gradually ending PLN's monopoly on the domestic power market, which the union deems unconstitutional because it takes control of the key sector out of the government's hands.
"We believe the PLN management is trying to intimidate us into silence by imposing sanctions, reassigning individual workers and in some cases firing workers strongly opposed to their policy," Achmad said. The charge, under the 2000 Union Law, could see Dahlan and other PLN executives face up to five years in prison if convicted.
Dahlan, meanwhile, shrugged off the complaint against him as a pointless move on the part of the workers. "I'm fine with it because it only serves to make me more famous," he said with a laugh.
The new electricity law, which replaces legislation from 1985, was passed in September after five years of deliberations.
The government is still finalizing exactly how it will be implemented, but it is clear that it will remove PLN's long-held monopoly on selling electricity directly to consumers by allowing private companies into the sector, which stakeholders say is in dire need of investment.
The union's Achmad previously said that customers would be vulnerable to price volatility if the sector was privatized.
"If the companies that generate the power are different from those that distribute it and sell it, there will be a much more complex process that may cost customers triple the taxes and overhead fees," he said.
"If current production costs stand at an average Rp 1,200 [13 cents] per kilowatt hour, with the new scheme it may end up being more than Rp 1,500 per kilowatt hour."