Labor & Employment Law

Asian Workers Expose Exploitation on Highway Project

By admin

Cassady Fendlay and Cara Kurtz of the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center report on serious labor violations discovered by a workers? group on a highway project in Indonesia partially funded by the Asian Development Bank.

More than 200 workers on the Trans-Kalimantan Highway construction project in Indonesia spend long hours toiling in the hot sun and end their day in a company camp, bathing in a dirty pond and sleeping on the floors of cramped barracks. For nearly two years, they have worked to build the highway in these unhealthy conditions without adequate pay.

The Asian Labor Network on International Financial Institutions (ALNI), which surveyed the workers, found nearly all have been working without safety equipment and have not been insured under the national social security program. They also don’t have collective bargaining agreements or a forum to fight to improve their poor labor conditions.

Lukman Hakim, ALNI?s secretary and survey team leader, told The Jakarta Post the workers have been living in cramped barracks and tents along the road, without electricity or sanitation.

The survey, conducted by 22 unions, also found 30 percent of workers were being paid below the Indonesian province?s minimum wage. Hakim says the violations started  after the original contractor subcontracted the project to another company that, in turn, subcontracted it to another firm. Each new subcontractor paid employees less than the previous employer.

Assisted by the Solidarity Center, trade unionists, labor activists and academics formed ALNI in 1999 with chapters in Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. Through ALNI, workers are calling for international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), to be held accountable for the ramifications of their policies.

The Manila-based ADB is providing 30 percent of the funding for the Trans-Kalimantan Highway. ADB?s loans often come with required public policy changes that result in massive unemployment, monetary policies that drive interest rates as high as 80 percent and fiscal austerity programs that force governments to slash their health and education budgets.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on October 20, 2010 (boomark / email).