29 August, 2011
The ICEM affiliate Paper & Paper Products Manufacturing Employees’ Union (PPPMEU) of Malaysia won ground-breaking collective agreement language on Contract and Agency Labour (CAL) with Kimberly Clark, a global paper products company. In July at the company’s Kluang pulp and hygiene products mill, PPPMEU and KC agreed to change a management rights clause in the Union Recognition article to specifically state that “Contract workers are within the scope of the agreement.”
The renewal three-year agreement also gives all workers, some 500 in total, a 6% wage increase retroactive to 1 January 2011. In the month since the new agreement went into effect, 130 of the 180 temporary workers directly employed by Kimberly Clark have joined PPPMEU, a fact that speaks for itself.
All contract workers of Kimberly Clark Products Malaysia, beginning in 2012, will have entitlement to full social benefits, bonus payouts, public holidays, annual leave, retirement benefits, and all allowances as full-time staff. Many of the economic and social conventions in the renewal agreement applied retroactively to contract workers as well.
Further wage increases will come in 2012 and 2013. The PPPMEU and Kimberly Clark in Malaysia bargained in the first half of 2011, but unwillingness to recognise all public holidays and other stumbling blocks prevented a timely agreement. In the end, PPPMEU deserves commendation in gaining from Kimberly Clark Products Malaysia an outstanding achievement on behalf of contract workers in the formal recognition of their union rights.
There are still 100 third-party contractors working at Kimberly Clark’s Kluang, Johor state, mill remain outside the scope of the collective agreement. These sub-contractors work for local companies. But for now, PPPMEU will continue recruitment inside the American company’s Malaysian enterprise in order to build greater union power. The PPPMEU has had longstanding labour relations with Kimberly Clark dating to the 1980s. The company has had a market presence in Malaysia since 1969 and built its first manufacturing enterprise in 1983. About ten years ago, Kimberly Clark expanded at Kluang with nappie production.
The ICEM congratulates PPPMEU in getting this ground-breaking collective agreement that brings immediate improvements to the work-lives of contract employees.