After 40 women at the expanding Phillips Seafood processing plant in Lampung, Indonesia requested permanent jobs, the company stopped calling them to work. While some of these workers had been employed on a casual, daily contract basis for more than 20 years, it was only after they requested a regular contract that the company decided that their work performance was “poor.”
- On November 25, 2022, the IUFaffiliate FSBMM union met with Phillips Seafood Indonesia management to demand that the 40 unfairly terminated women daily workers be given work and be converted to permanent positions
- Management refused and repeated that the women failed to improve their “speed” in meeting daily targets; five days later, on November 30, management stopped contributions to their mandatory government health care
- FSBMM has launched protest actions in front of the Phillips Seafood Indonesia head office and factory in Pasuruan, East Java, demanding the reinstatement of the terminated workers
- The IUF has written to the CEO of Phillips Seafood pointing out that the decision of local management to effectively terminate these 40 women workers was in blatant contradiction of Phillips’ stated policy and calling on him to intervene
IUF General Secretary Sue Longley stated, “From Indonesia to the US, from the processing plants to their restaurants, the IUF stands with the members of FSBMM in their struggle for secure employment with union rights at Philips Seafood.”
