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Indonesia: From oil palm plantations,
with repression…
Extensive
cultivation of oil palm and the resulting oil extraction have
always been linked to repression. Plantation cultivation was originally
established by colonial regimes. The rapid expansion of plantations
in Asia following the Second World War was encouraged in connection
with forest clearing and was used as a weapon in combating Malay
rebels.
The growth
of plantations has not been accompanied by increased rights for
palm-oil workers. The job continues to be hard and dangerous.
Production techniques have hardly changed over the past 150 years.
The wooden hook used to harvest the fruit has been replaced in
some plantations by a sharper metal alloy hook. And now
abundant amounts of toxic herbicides are applied by unprotected
workers spraying from leaking backpack containers. Accidents are
common and life expectancy is short. Unions are very often brutally
repressed.
To dismantle
a newly-formed trade union, Musim Mas – the world’s largest palm
oil refinery, based in Sumatra, Indonesia – fired over 1,000 trade
union members in retaliation for a strike. The company evicted
workers from their homes and their children from their schools
and also arranged for the arrest and prosecution of 6 union leaders.
These six young men are presently serving prison terms ranging
from 14 months to 2 years for the “crime” of attempting to exercise
their collective rights as workers.
The International
Union of Food workers (IUF) had been consolidating world trade
union support for a considerable group of these workers who had
been resisting the company’s efforts to make them hand in written
resignation of their rights and their trade union membership by
accepting compensation for their dismissal. This phase of the
struggle came to an end when on 7 June the trade union reported
that some 200 workers – who had been resisting – accepted financial
compensation for the loss of their jobs. In exchange they were
pressured to drop all legal claims against the company: meaning
that the collective dismissals cannot be contested through an
appeals process. Compensation amounts to some 123 dollars
per worker, the equivalent of 6 weeks wages. The six prisoners
were also obliged to renounce their right to appeal against their
absurd criminal convictions which have been denounced by Amnesty
International and other human rights organizations for criminalizing
trade union activities. Hunger is a powerful weapon in the
hands of a strong and ruthless corporation.
The company
praised the “mutual agreement” by announcing that “This matter
was resolved in accordance with Indonesian labour laws and in
compliance with all the country’s regulations. We are committed
to proactively engaging our stakeholders, both in Indonesia and
abroad, to promote a sustainable oil palm industry.”
The Government,
under accusations at United Nations ILO for serial violations
of international Conventions on trade union rights, praised an
agreement, which “will contribute towards more positive industrial
relations in the palm oil industry.”
The situation
in Indonesia can be summed up in one sentence: one thousand workers
were fired from their jobs and evicted from their homes, a union
was dismantled and 6 union workers are in prison, but compliance
with national law was achieved by paying out 123 dollars and extracting
a “peace agreement” from the prisoners, in which they renounce
their rights.
IUF affiliates
around the world responded to our appeals with messages to the
company and the government and generous financial support (now
going to assist the families of the imprisoned trade unionists).
The fact that our campaign is beginning to gain ground is shown
by the company’s newfound willingness to meet with an organization
that they had previously refused to recognize and tried to destroy.
In a number of key companies, unions linked to the food processing
industry called on their managements to examine their palm oil
sources and in particular, their relations with Musim Mas. In
one case IUF intervention succeeded in bringing one transnational
retailer to temporarily suspend its use of Musim Mas as a producer
of its brand products. The FNV in the Netherlands exhorted the
Government to cease financial support to the Roundtable on Sustainable
Palm Oil (RSPO), the industry’s “socially responsible” public
relations mechanism, which includes “multiple interested parties,”
among them Musim Mass as an Executive Board member, together with
the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Oxfam. Public scrutiny
of social conditions underlying palm oil production continues
and will not be easily suppressed.
The campaign
was working and lessons learnt should not be forgotten, for palm
oil continues to grow as a sector built on brutal exploitation.
Musim Mas is hardly unique among palm oil producers in its eagerness
to crush rights in the search for profits. The use of palm
oil as a biofuel means that its price is now linked to the rising
cost of fossil fuels, inciting even more greed. It is being encouraged
as an alternative to banana-trees in Latin America and promoted
as a healthy alternative (which it is not) to trans-fats in processed
foods. The plantation areas are wildly expanding, posing
a threat to the environment and to workers.
IUF no longer
has an industrial dispute with Musim Mas. However, an even greater
problem still exists with the company and with the lawlessness
and barbarism of the sector as a whole. The World Bank,
through its private sector funding agency, the International Finance
Corporation (IFC), is increasing its support to expand oil palm
cultivation. The RSPO, through its privileged relationship
with the World Bank provides it with a “sustainable” cover to
fund the kind of social destruction that Musim Mas inflicted on
those who produce its profits.
Trade unions
in food processing should continue to question their companies’
sources of palm oil and other inputs derived from indefensible
practices. Supporters of justice for oil palm workers should look
closer at how NGOs risk – even in good faith – fronting for companies
such as Musim Mas. WWF and Oxfam, while playing their roles on
the RSPO Executive Board, need to make a careful analysis of their
own positions relating to palm oil workers’ rights. The
Dutch unions are right: government support for the RSPO and the
NGO palm oil activities, while taking us further from urgently
required solutions, is a scandal that must be stopped. The
RSPO should also be challenged and asked to explain Syngenta’s
participation in the Roundtable. Syngenta manufactures paraquat,
the most toxic herbicide on the planet. Paraquat is responsible
for the death of tens of thousands of rural workers every year
and is liberally applied on oil palm plantations. The Musim
Mas union endeavoured to negotiate a safer application of toxic
chemicals and was crushed. The company, whose product kills palm
oil workers, has now applied for membership in the RSPO with full
voting rights.
Public relations
will not bring sustainability to an industry based on the suppression
of human rights. The only alternative is organization and binding
and enforceable instruments to ensure rights are respected. Brutality
and denial of rights underpin the palm oil chain. The case for
organizing workers in this sector is self-evident. The IUF is
committed to ensuring that organization.
By IUF,
e-mail:
iuf@iuf.org,
http://www.iufdocuments.org/cgi-bin/editorials/db.cgi?db=default&ww=1&uid=default&ID=475&view_records=1&es=1
