Lingering problems: Industrial action, peace

Lingering problems: Industrial action, peace

Vedi R. Hadiz

In January 2004, the minimum wage in Jakarta will stand at Rp
671,550 per month, representing an increase of 6.3 percent
compared to the year before. Moreover, this certainly seems a
"good" wage compared to the level of around Rp 150,000 just seven
or so years ago. Though the minimum wage levels in regions across
the sprawling archipelago differ, similar increases have taken
place elsewhere.

As a result, many people might well be tempted to ask, why are
workers, especially in Indonesia's manufacturing zones, still
complaining? Why do we incessantly hear of worker unrest?
Industrialists, domestic and foreign, have often complained that
labor strikes are one of the key reasons that Indonesia has
become so unattractive as an investment locale. "We'll go to
Vietnam or China" is what is commonly heard, or some other place
where workers are less "ungrateful".

If the problem is lack of freedom of organization, hasn't
there been a significant liberalization of the laws and
regulations regarding trade unionism? After all, the New Order-
tainted All-Indonesia Worker's Union (SPSI) is no longer the sole
state-recognized labor organization in the country. There are
literally dozens of union organizations now registered at the
Department of Manpower.

So what's the problem? Do workers not realize that, with tens
of millions of people unemployed, out of a workforce of over 100
million (Central Bureau of Statistics data, 2003), there is only
so much that they can expect? Too much complaining can mean the
loss of jobs for their fellow Indonesians. "What a bloody selfish
lot these workers are", the English might say.

Well, it is unfortunate that the point of view of the
rank-and-file worker does not often make it into the national
newspapers or television programs. This is hardly surprising:
businesspeople are much more influential, and the middle class so
much more eloquent. They look better on TV as well. Who is going
to interview a laborer from Tangerang (Banten), Sidoarjo (East
Java), or Medan's (North Sumatra) industrial zone, to get their
take on the toils of life in Indonesia today? Besides, when they
actually do get on TV, they seem so emotional, so uneducated and
dare I say, so dishevelled. Certainly such people cannot know
anything about life, let alone as much as a well-dressed
corporate lawyer or politician in Jakarta. They should just be
grateful that they can earn a living -- look at all those
unemployed who yearn for a job!

This writer is, perhaps inevitably, a member of the middle
class intelligentsia -- a section of society that had quite a
comfortable life-style during most of the New Order. But for
well over a decade now, he has been visiting industrial workers
at their homes, sometimes their workplaces, just chatting about
their conditions of life and work in general. These
conversations -- which often develop into real discussions about
social issues -- have taken place all around the Jabotabek area,
parts of Central and East Java, as well as North Sumatra -- quite
a good cross-section of Indonesia's industrial centers.
Undoubtedly, some NGO activists that live for periods of time
with workers in sprawling urban slums have deeper insights into
what social scientists like me call "the proletariat". But I
reckon I can say a few things to try to explain the seeming
paradox of higher wages, freedom of organization -- and yet -- no
real industrial peace.

The following is one writer's, admittedly subjective,
interpretation. First of all, while the wages look good on
paper, they do not look half as good when one considers the
spiraling cost of basic necessities in Indonesia's major cities
over the last five or six years. But even middle class housewives
can empathize with that. The fact is that the quality of life of
Indonesia's "proletariat" has scarcely improved, and that for a
worker with a family, a "living wage" is but a pipe-dream.

Second, there is a deep sense of injustice which lies deep in
the heart of many workers who are able to witness the
ostentatiously lavish and consumeristic lifestyles of rich
Jakartans and citizens of many other major cities. They may not
know of conceptual tools that economists use to measure social
inequalities -- but they feel, live and breathe inequality in
their everyday life. And we are not just talking the tangible,
material sorts of inequalities. The experience of the workplace
is one of powerlessness or at least gross inequality of power
between management and worker. The result is the many indignities
often suffered at the workplace.

Third, as everyone that has lived in this country knows, what
looks good on paper in Indonesia often is not so good in real
life. For example, although there is supposed to be freedom of
organization, many workers talk about the immense difficulties of
setting up a functioning labor organization at their workplace.
They regularly complain that local bureaucrats make it hard for
this to happen, or that management develops all kinds of reward
and punishment mechanisms to hinder genuine workplace organizing.

Fourth, workers still do not feel that their formal rights
offer them real protection. Though I have encountered workers
that relate stories of how military personnel come in to quash
any signs of labor unrest on behalf of management, many more have
recently complained about hired goons and thugs. Sometimes more
brutal than the military-proper, some of these hail from the
"youth organizations" -- or paramilitary groups -- linked to
political parties.

More issues can be added to the arbitrary list above. Many
workers from Indonesia's state-owned companies, for example, fear
that privatization plans will cost them their jobs. Most of these
issues cannot be tackled easily -- and thus one cannot expect
lasting industrial peace to transpire overnight. Indeed they are
but symptoms of deeper, more fundamental problems in Indonesian
society -- in which the voices of the poor have been marginalized
for decades, and where the power of money and brute force still
speaks much too loudly.

The writer is also the author of Workers and the State in New
Order Indonesia (London, Routledge 1997)