Serikat Pekerja PDAM Jakarta, representing workers in Palyja (the GDF-Suez concession of the city of Jakarta’s water system), finally won their demands for salary adjustments. After many years of stalled negotiations, recent union mobilisation and political pressure convinced the private employer to finally agree a 50% wage increase, retroactive to January 2011. Although 50% may appear high, this level was needed to compensate for years of low and frozen wages, lagging far behind high inflation in Indonesia. The wage negotiations in 2011 are in the context of the increasing mobilisation opposing the 13-year old private concession contracts in Jakarta (which has 12 years remaining in the 25-year concession). A number of groups, including the PSI affiliated unions, are exerting pressure within the city of Jakarta to end these two privatisation contracts - due to a number of problems with private management.
SP PDAM Jakarta President, Simon Hutasoit, said that the union will be holding further talks with the company over the issues in dispute and that the wage increase for the Palyja workers now needed to be extended to the workers of the 2nd private concession, Aerta. Photos on December 2010 strike
Media advice from PSI
