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Freeport Strikers Accused of Turning Off Investors
Ririn Radiawati Kusuma | December 12, 2011

Striking workers seen here using pipes to block a road leading to Freeport-McMoRan’s gold and copper mine in Timika, Papua, last month. The union has said it would extend the strike a fourth month. (AFP Photo/Tjahjo Eranius) Striking workers seen here using pipes to block a road leading to Freeport-McMoRan’s gold and copper mine in Timika, Papua, last month. The union has said it would extend the strike a fourth month. (AFP Photo/Tjahjo Eranius)
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Comments

jusdogin
8:37am Dec 18, 2011

hey webed can you publish the contact info please or comment why not? ciao

nonredneck
3:22am Dec 18, 2011

Contact info provided. My comment truncated again by JG censorship despite regular comment and nothing innapropriate.

DrDez
7:29pm Dec 17, 2011

nonredneck - yes JG operate censorship - its called moderation and with people like Tommy suing Garuda who can blame them

So... lets get this straight - I am all for positive action BUT you have actually have no recognised mechanism to deliver that - Or do you? I would like to invite you to speak at our 3 Indonesian plants and spread your message = please supply contact information - thank you

nonredneck
5:34pm Dec 17, 2011

Thx Val. Majority of the ppl I meet and talk to everyday tend to hold this view "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." or "I'm too old to change", or "I'm illiterate so I can't understand" or "That's impossible!" or "Indo is too f[edit]ed-up, there's nothing u can change about it" "Hopeless, Dr. said I got 6months to live"


Valkyrie
4:58pm Dec 17, 2011

nonredneck....

Have you come across this?

"The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."

I have seen many like you. I wish you well in your endeavors.

Tony Wenas, the vice chairman of the Indonesian Mining Association, said on Sunday that he was worried a union decision to extend its three-month strike at the Freeport mine in Papua would hurt the country’s investment climate.

Juli Parorrongan, a union spokesman, was on Saturday quoted by Bloomberg as saying that the workers would continue their strike until at least Jan. 15. He said they had informed the manpower authority in Papua of the decision on Dec. 5.

About 8,000 of the 12,000 workers at the Grasberg mine, one of the largest copper and gold mines in the world, have been on strike since Sept. 15 seeking higher wages. The mine is owned by Freeport Indonesia, a subsidiary of US miner Freeport-McMoRan.

Tony, who until recently was president director of International Nickel Indonesia, a nickel mining company, said he was worried the strike could “spread to other mining companies.”

The worst outcome, he said, would be if workers at manufacturing companies also started following suit.

He said that apart from regulatory uncertainty, labor issues were key factors for investors in deciding whether to bring their money to Indonesia.

Juli was quoted as saying that workers “want to encourage further discussion aimed at settling the problem as soon as possible.” He added that an agreement would immediately end the strike.

The Grasberg workers originally demanded a pay increase to $30 to $200 an hour, from $1.50 to $3 an hour. Their demand has since fallen to $7.50 an hour. The company has so far only been willing to raise salaries by 35 percent over two years.

Freeport Indonesia spokesman Ramdani Sirait told the Jakarta Globe in a text message on Sunday that a 20-kilometer concentrate pipeline from mining sites to the port had been damaged during the strike, causing Freeport to be unable to deliver concentrate to a firm that processes it in Gresik, East Java.

“We still can’t deliver the material to the port,” he said.

The strike caused Freeport to declare force majeure at the end of October on concentrate shipments from Grasberg because it couldn’t fulfill certain contractual obligations. Grasberg is currently operating at about 5 percent of its daily 230,000 metric ton capacity because of the work stoppage, a mining official has said.