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rotesters staged a rally in front of the office of global security service company PT G4S on Jl. Ciputat Raya, South Jakarta, on Monday, and threatened to continue demonstrating for a month until their demands were met.

In their demand for better industrial relations, the protesters, who claimed to represent more than 700 security guards employed by PT G4S, occupied part of the street, causing traffic to back up to as far as Ciputat, South Tangerang.

“We don’t want to rally like this, disturbing people and the authorities. But this is PT G4S’s own doing,” their leader Kardinal, who also heads the Indonesian Metal Workers Federation’s (FSPMI) Jakarta branch, said on Monday as reported by kompas.com. “We will rally for a month until our demands are met.”

He said most of the workers claimed they had been forced by the company to renew their contracts three times.

“[After the third contract renewal] the company then moved them to G4S subsidiaries,” Kardinal said, adding that the workers had not received additional benefits, even though the companies they had been assigned to guard were worth tens of billions of rupiah.

PT G4S’s allegedly tried to break up the workers’ union by firing one of its members. “One of our leaders was fired arbitrarily, even though the Jakarta Manpower Agency has said that the process of firing someone must be fair,” Kardinal said.

The Jakarta Manpower Agency’s head of manpower monitoring, Khadik Triyanto, said the agency was mediating between PT G4S and its workers. “It’s being handled by the South Jakarta Manpower Agency,” Khadik said.