Labor problems 'due to same old system'

JAKARTA (JP): Is workers staging strikes at the House of Representatives or Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration day after day a good sign of people asserting their newly-found freedom of expression? Carmello C. Noriel at the Jakarta office of the International Labor Organization (ILO) thinks not.

The collapse of Soeharto's New Order regime might have brought about positive developments, such as the 1999 ratification of the trade union act, but freedom of expression is not enough to relieve workers from their suffering, he said.

Rather than having to deal with the weaknesses of only one union (the SPSI, which was strongly controlled by Soeharto), workers now have at least 14 worker unions, but that has not materialized greater opportunities for the protection of their interests.

That is because two other bills -- on dispute settlement and manpower development, replacing the old Manpower Act -- have yet to be ratified.

"Three years and the laws have not yet been ratified. I don't know whether (it's because of) slowness, lack of concentration, confusion or competing priorities," he said.

What is clear is that now more people are complaining about the presence of too many unions which are not contributing to the betterment of the workers' conditions.

"You have created unions, but the old attitude and bureaucracy are still the same," Noriel said in a recent interview assessing the employment crisis, which occurred after the 1997 economic meltdown.

Noriel quoted a local official who revealed that labor disputes in 2000 doubled those of 1999, citing highly visible cases such as the strike of Shangri-La Hotel workers or those of PT Kadera in Jakarta.

Dispute settlement becomes an impossibility when even the question of representation cannot be answered. The standing tripartite formula -- which involves representatives of the workers, employers and government -- is difficult to implement because there is more than one trade union representing the workers. Meanwhile the SPSI is still actually listed in the old membership.

"The logical thing would be to institute a law that encourages collective bargaining and negotiation with employers to prevent problems and solve disputes quickly," Noriel said. "Later on you must establish an arbitration court which is streamlined, fair and very fast. No monkey business."

"That is the way to do it so the workers are satisfied, both workers and employers respect (the court's) decisions, and you can have a smooth-running dispute settlement system," he said.

Noriel spoke of ILO Jakarta's plan to launch on May 1, coinciding with International Labor Day, a 24-month project in six provinces promoting sound labor relations in Indonesia by helping the three parties (government, employers and unions) increase their ability to implement the new labor legislation.

The specific target groups in government will be the labor officers working at the district, provincial and headquarters level, charged with the management of labor administrations which include conciliators, mediators and labor inspectors.

Other government target groups will be industrial judges and tripartite laymen and women, as well as senior officials at the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration, the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, and the National Development Planning Board.

The project will also target legislators to maintain the momentum for labor law reform and facilitate the full implementation of the new labor laws and regulations, Noriel said.

Among the employers and workers, leadership at the apex and grassroots level will be the targeted. The actors in bipartite institutions, like the work councils at the shop-floor level, negotiating councils at the enterprise level and other forms of labor management consultation and cooperation, as well as tripartite institutions, will be targeted.

The six provinces chosen for the program are Jakarta, West Java, East Java, North Sumatra, Riau and East Kalimantan. The project will have offices in Jakarta, Surabaya, Samarinda, Medan and Batam.

How much does the absence of good labor management contribute to the fact that Indonesia has yet to emerge from the crisis?

"How come the laws of the old regime are still maintained until now? They must be reformed, that must be the first priority," Noriel said.

"Of course people say: 'we are more democratic now'. But ask anybody if they are really clear (about the extent of democratic reform)?

"What is more democratic about the labor policy now? How are people implementing it? Labor management is affected by the political and economic situation of the country -- not many companies are opening up, companies are downsizing and even closing down. These factors all contribute to labor unrest unless they are managed well," he said.

Noriel suggests that Indonesia may have got its priorities wrong by ratifying the trade union act before the bills on working standards and protection, and collective bargaining. (swe)