Fatalities, Accidents, Suppression and Criminalization: The Fate of Workers at the PT GNI Nickel Smelter By Project Multatuli Pt3

Workers face death, suicides, accidents, respiratory problems, contract terminations, and wage cuts in the nickel industry in Morowali on Indonesia’s Sulawesi Island, proudly touted by the government of President Joko Widodo. Worker protests and anger are also being met with imprisonment.

Editor

May 26, 2023

4–6 minutes

Asia, Business, China, Development, Economics, Energy, Energy Transition, EV, Indonesia, Joko Widodo, labor, Labor Rights, Labor Unions, Lingkungan Hidup, Metals, Mining, News, Nickel, Pembangunan, Police, Sulawesi, travel, Work Safety, Workers Rights

Fatalities, Work Accidents, Union Suppression and Worker Criminalization: The Fate of Indonesian and Chinese Workers at the PT GNI Nickel Smelter #3

By Permata Adinda and Muammar Fikrie for Project Multatuli, May 26, 2023

Minggu Bulu — Dump Truck Division Worker

Since the “clash” between Indonesian and Chinese workers, and the arrest of dozens of workers, Mr. Minggu Bulu has never had a good night’s sleep. The police are looking for him. Initially he was asked to provide testimony as a witness, but by April 2023 he had been named a suspect. Alongside Amirullah, Minggu Bulu was charged with incitement, and faces a potential 5 to 6 years in prison.

His legal representative, from the People’s Legal Aid Coalition, suspects that the Indonesian police want to link the union’s strike on the day with the violent incidents that took place between workers within the PT GNI industrial complex that night.

“The eight demands made during the strike are accepted rights guaranteed by the law,” said Mr. Hasbi from the Coalition.

Amirullah, chair of the National Workers’ Union at PT GNI, shows a police summons summoning him as a witness. The police named him a suspect in April 2023 under the provisions relating to sedition. (Project M/Muammar Fikrie) https://projectmultatuli.org/kematian-kecelakaan-kerja-pemberangusan-serikat-kriminalisasi-nasib-pekerja-indonesia-dan-tiongkok-di-industri-smelter-nikel-pt-gni/

At 33, Mr. Minggu has to support his wife and four children. After two years of unemployment due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Minggu is part of the Toraja ethnic group from Luwu Timur in South Sulawesi. He applied for a job as a dump truck driver at PT GNI. The road distance from his village to the company’s location is 168 miles. He chose to migrate due to limited job opportunities in his hometown, other than farming like his parents.

Minggu Bulu thought that with a monthly salary he could at least secure a stable income for his family. But after working at PT GNI for 20 months, his perspective changed. Working at PT GNI turned out to be a dangerous job.

Information about workers who died or had accidents circulated in WhatsApp groups of PT GNI workers. Last March, a Chinese worker fell from a height and died. Before that, an Indonesian worker was crushed by a conveyor belt. There were reports of collisions within the complex. Two dump trucks accidentally collided, resulting in one driver’s knee being shattered. In another case, a motorcyclist was grazed and run over by a dump truck. Some survived. Some died because they were crushed by the wheels.

“There were three accident incidents in one day,” recounted Minggu Bulu.

Even so, cases like these were never transparently communicated by the company’s management to the workers, says Minggu Bulu. “Sometimes we were blamed. Sometimes it was seen as negligence.”

Workers travel home by motorbike. Traffic accidents in the PT GNI plant complex are unavoidable as the workers using motorbikes use the same routes as heavy equipment vehicles. (Project M/Anonymous) https://projectmultatuli.org/kematian-kecelakaan-kerja-pemberangusan-serikat-kriminalisasi-nasib-pekerja-indonesia-dan-tiongkok-di-industri-smelter-nikel-pt-gni/

Minggu Bulu experienced it himself. One day after he had just started work driving a dump truck, the truck accidentally hit a parked motorcycle directly behind the truck. “I reversed, hit it, and the motorcycle was destroyed.”

As a result of the incident, Minggu Bulu requested accountability from the company’s safety department. But he was asked to go to the employee management department and then told to reimburse half the price of the motorcycle. The HR department argued that both parties were at fault: the worker was considered to have wrongly parked his motorcycle within the complex, and Minggu Bulu was deemed to have accidentally hit it.

Asked to do this, Minggu Bulu was puzzled. “If it’s 50:50, it means person to person. What about the company’s responsibility? According to the rules, two-wheeled vehicles are not allowed in the complex.”

Minggu Bulu was still asked to pay compensation. He had to comply. He was just thankful that there were no casualties at the time.

Mr. Minggu concluded that working at PT GNI meant that there was going to be a risk of accidents, but also meant “dealing with arbitrary superiors and constantly changing company regulations.” And finally, he was fired for being an officer of the National Workers Union.

However, after the events of January 14, the choice to simply return to his home town slipped away for him. His fate now lies in the hands of the state.

His movements were monitored while he was still a witness. Police visited his boarding house in the Tompira district of East Petasia. When attending a discussion forum with several labor unions in the capital of Central Sulawesi province Palu, three police officers picked him up and took him back to North Morowali district, an 8-hour journey by road.

While in Jakarta to attend a meeting between the National Workers Union and PT GNI, mediated by Deputy Minister for Labor Mr. Afriansyah Noor, two police officers from North Morowali district approached and cornered Minggu Bulu and handed him a second summons.

The experience shook his mental state. “When they delivered the letter to Jakarta, I was confused. My status (at the time) was just a witness, so why had the local police from Sulawesi chased me all the way to Jakarta like this?” (Continued..)

A boarding house for nickel smelter workers in North Morowali, Central Sulawesi. Boarding house rents range from IDR 1.5 million ($100) to 2 million ($130)/month. Workers usually rent with 1 or 2 other workers to reduce rental costs. (Project M/Muammar Fikrie) https://projectmultatuli.org/kematian-kecelakaan-kerja-pemberangusan-serikat-kriminalisasi-nasib-pekerja-indonesia-dan-tiongkok-di-industri-smelter-nikel-pt-gni/

This article is based on https://projectmultatuli.org/kematian-kecelakaan-kerja-pemberangusan-serikat-kriminalisasi-nasib-pekerja-indonesia-dan-tiongkok-di-industri-smelter-nikel-pt-gni/.

Featured image credit: Tropical Rainforest in Indonesia By Rhett Ayers Butler https://www.butlernature.com/2022/01/04/whats-the-outlook-for-tropical-rainforests-in-2022/

In related news:

Rate this:

One response to “Fatalities, Accidents, Suppression and Criminalization: The Fate of Workers at the PT GNI Nickel Smelter By Project Multatuli Pt3”

Fatalities, Accidents, Suppression and Criminalization: The Fate of Workers at the PT GNI Nickel Smelter By Project Multatuli #2 – Stories From Indonesia

April 3, 2024 at 3:23 am

[…] After the melee incident, the main demands of the PT GNI workers, including workplace safety, disappeared altogether. In the mass media, the dominant narrative presented was around the so-called horizontal conflict, packaged in racial tensions between Indonesian and Chinese workers. (Continued..) […]

LikeLike

Reply

Stories From Indonesia