More than 1,300 people clashed with security guards at an Indonesian shoe factory which supplies sportswear giants Adidas and Mizuno, police said yesterday, a few months after they were sacked for striking over better pay.
The workers were laid off in July after walking out over demands for back pay following a hike in the minimum wage at the start of this year.
Confirming the clashes during a rally at which the former workers were calling to be reinstated, Wahyu Widodo, police chief of Tangerang, said police were “helping mediate” between protesters and the owners of the Panarub Dwikarya factory.
Indonesia is an increasingly popular destination for major manufacturing companies, lured by cheap labor, but the 240 million-strong nation has witnessed frequent bouts of labor unrest as workers demand better pay and employment rights.
The protest in Tangerang, about 40km west of Jakarta, turned violent after security guards hosed down angry former employees with dirty water, protesters said.
“The workers want to be hired back, their children’s education is depending on it, and we want the company to sit together with us and work on an agreement,” said Ernawati, from the Independent Labor Union Alliance, which took part in the rally.
Adidas issued a statement after the July strike urging the factory — which the German company calls an “overflow” facility for its local supplier — to rehire the workers and pay the wages owed.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
PRESSURE EXPECTED: The appreciation of the NT dollar reflected expectations that Washington would press Taiwan to boost its currency against the US dollar, dealers said Taiwan’s export-oriented semiconductor and auto part manufacturers are expecting their margins to be affected by large foreign exchange losses as the New Taiwan dollar continued to appreciate sharply against the US dollar yesterday. Among major semiconductor manufacturers, ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光), the world’s largest integrated circuit (IC) packaging and testing services provider, said that whenever the NT dollar rises NT$1 against the greenback, its gross margin is cut by about 1.5 percent. The NT dollar traded as strong as NT$29.59 per US dollar before trimming gains to close NT$0.919, or 2.96 percent, higher at NT$30.145 yesterday in Taipei trading
RSS