Candidates uninterested in labor issues
Ridwan Max Sijabat and Kurniawan Hari Jakarta
Labor issues have been glaringly absent a week into the presidential campaign, even though 45 million people are either underemployed or unemployed.
The candidates have been generous in their promises to create jobs and improve workers' welfare, but have offered no solutions as to how they mean to achieve this; their campaign teams, however, have been more forthcoming.
Bomer Pasaribu of the Wiranto-Solahuddin Wahid camp said they would take an approach "combining" capitalism and socialism.
"We need a labor policy that promotes workers' rights and simultaneously stimulates the investment climate," he told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.
Muchtar Pakpahan of the Amien Rais-Siswono Yudohusodo camp, meanwhile, said they would review the existing package of labor legislation for potentially disruptive impacts on the harmony between investors and workers.
"We have to learn from Japan, West Europe and South Korea on how they are trying to establish a moderate labor system that implements workers' rights while simultaneously encouraging investment growth," he said.
The investment climate in Indonesia, he said, was relatively favorable in regards labor partly because of its three pro-labor laws: Freedom of association, industrial relations and labor dispute settlements.
The campaign teams also stressed the importance of an employment-based development economy to cope with unemployment.
Robik Mukav of the Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono-Jusuf Kalla camp said workers' rights and global labor movement were not popular issues during the campaign because they conflicted with the team's economic and investment programs.
"We want to make some changes and achieve some progress in all fields, but it is difficult to adopt a global labor movement policy because the economy must be oriented toward growth and job creation," he told the Post.
The labor law package has forced many foreign labor-intensive companies to relocate to other countries and has delayed foreign investment to Indonesia over the last five years.
The Megawati Soekarnoputri-Hasyim Wahid camp was upbeat that they would be able to create 12.9 million new jobs in the next five years by creating a more accommodating investment climate -- although they did not detail how -- and providing a soft-loan credit scheme for small-scale entrepreneurs.
Elly Rasdiani, a strategist of the Hamzah Haz-Agum Gumelar camp, said they would focus on improving the quality of human resources by establishing more labor training centers and raising the national education budget.
"A people-oriented economic policy cannot be implemented unless the quality of human resources are improved, because almost 70 percent of a 140 million-plus workforce are uneducated or elementary school dropouts," she said.
Side-bar story
Labor exporters wait for perceptive leaders
The Jakarta Post Jakarta
Labor exporters and activists said on Tuesday that they regret presidential candidates' lack of attention to improving the labor condition and providing protection for Indonesian overseas workers.
"This means the presidential candidates do not realize how strategic labor export is," Association of Labor Export Companies (Apjati) chairman Husein Alaydrus said.
About three million Indonesians work abroad, and have collectively injected US$5.4 billion in fresh funds into the economy over the last three years.
Labor exporters, he said, were waiting for a candidate with programs to protect migrant workers and provide skills development.
He added that violence against Indonesian migrant workers had increased over the last three years mainly because of the government's lack of commitment.
Salma Safitri, coordinator of Women's Solidarity, warned against the reemergence of labor exploitation, judging from the candidates' stressing employment-based economic programs.
"Indonesia will return to the New Order era, which gave more attention to the inflow of foreign investment with its cheap- labor policy, so that workers' rights were ignored and they were underpaid," she said, and that market-friendly labor laws needed to be reviewed and amended to help better the labor condition.
Arist Merdeka Sirait, another activist, said all candidates appeared unfriendly to workers because they were "old faces" from the past regime without commitment to the national reform agenda.