Vol. 81/No. 30      August 14, 2017

 

West Papua miners strike to defend jobs, union rights

 
Fighting to defend jobs and union rights, thousands of workers at Freeport’s Grasberg copper and gold mine in West Papua, members of the Chemical, Energy and Mines Workers Union, have been on strike since May 1. Bosses at the mine, which is run by Arizona-based Freeport-McMoRan in partnership with U.K.-based Rio Tinto, have sacked more than 4,000 striking workers, claiming they have “resigned.”

West Papua, the western half of the island of New Guinea, was seized by the Indonesian government from the Netherlands in 1963. The indigenous people there are engaged in an ongoing struggle for self-determination.

The CEMWU launched the strike at an 8,000-strong May Day demonstration. Involving up to 6,000 workers, it began as a one-month work stoppage, but was extended through June, and again through July. Union officer Tri Puspital told the press July 21 that union members would stay out for a fourth month as “there is still no solution for worker concerns.”

The Indonesian government is pressuring foreign mining operations to part with a greater share of profits from the extraction of Indonesia’s immense mineral resources. Freeport-McMoRan, the world’s second-largest copper mine and biggest gold mine, holds concessions on almost 6 percent of West Papuan land.

Pushing Freeport to divest a 51 percent stake in its operations, pay new taxes and royalties, and construct a second smelter to boost processing capacity on Indonesian soil, the government imposed an export ban on the company Jan. 12. During the 15 weeks of reduced production that followed, Freeport began furloughing workers. The company slashed its “contractor-dominated workforce … to approximately 26,000 workers,” Reuters reported June 9, “from about 33,000 at the start of 2017.”

“Workers are having tough times but are keeping their spirits high to fight to get their jobs back,” Darmawan Puteranto, CEMWU vice secretary of Social and Economy, told the Militant in a July 3 phone interview.

Darmawan said the “the workers must not become the victims” of the dispute between the Indonesian government and the bosses.

While they continued to receive wages, workers placed on furlough lost their benefits, including overtime and housing. The CEMWU launched the strike to protest these conditions. When production cranked up again, the company demanded workers return to the mine and began sacking them for staying out on strike. As of June 22, the union reported that 4,220 had lost their jobs.

Freeport Indonesia must “guarantee the return of all furloughed workers to their jobs … without any preconditions,” said IndustriALL, the international labor federation to which CEMWU is affiliated. The company “must stop discriminating and harassing workers, who are members of CEMWU.”

The mine is now producing between 40 and 60 percent of normal production levels, Darmawan said, indicating the impact of the strike. While the CEMWU is the largest union, “there is also a union of workers based on their native tribe,” he said. About a third of the workforce is indigenous Papuan.

Baskaran Appu contributed to this article.
 
 
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