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View all search resultsJournos face COVID-19, pay cuts, layoffs
The AJI insisted that the crisis should not be used as an excuse for media companies to lay off their employees at will or to neglect their employees’ rights.
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n the eight months since the first announcement of COVID-19 outbreak in the country, the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI) has received a number of reports of media companies that have cut wages, delayed salary payments and laid off employees, citing COVID-19 as the reason for the need to cut costs.
The union has also found that many journalists have been infected with the coronavirus in the course of their work.
From March to September, at least 242 journalists tested positive for COVID-19, according to AJI data. “Journalists should have received protection from the media outlet they work for instead of being deprived of their rights,” AJI secretary-general Revolusi Riza said in a written statement on Monday.
Indeed, the AJI said that journalists were among the most vulnerable workers during the pandemic.
AJI Surabaya recorded in August that a number of media workers at Jawa Pos were offered a choice between early retirement or being laid off as part of the company’s efficiency drive amid the COVID-19 crisis.
Workers who refused to retire early, including some members of the Jawa Pos workers union, were laid off. However, several employees who had been laid off were later rehired as contract workers.
Jawa Pos human resources director Rudy Harahap said that the company had upheld the rights of its employees. “PT Jawa Pos Koran met all the obligations of employees who signed a mutual agreement for termination of employment in accordance with, even exceeding, the provisions of the Labor Law,” he told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
