Manpower bill `infringes workers rights'

By Ida Indawati Khouw

JAKARTA (JP): Restrictions on workers' right to strike in a controversial manpower bill infringe workers' basic rights, says labor expert Vedi Hadiz.

Vedi, a research fellow from Western Australia's Murdoch University, told The Jakarta Post last week: "The bill attacks an internationally recognized principle, the right of workers to strike."

He said the most damaging aspect of the bill was Article 86, which clarifies another part of the bill that restricts workers' right to invite others to strike.

"It's strange. Labor strikes only become effective when they are done collectively," Vedi said.

He said he was also concerned by provisions in articles 81 and 87 that say that a strike can only be held in a company area, striking workers will not be paid, authorities must be notified three days before a strike and that strikes must not disturb security and order.

Vedi said he agreed with those requesting the House of Representatives not to endorse the bill.

Minister of Manpower Abdul Latief ushered in the House's first reading of the manpower bill in mid-June with a call for workers and the public not to turn the controversial document into a "political issue".

"Don't let it become a political issue that could be exploited by certain parties to harm the interests of workers," he said.

Labor activists and other groups had, when the bill was submitted earlier this year, criticized the document for stifling workers' rights. For instance, the bill seeks to allow lockouts by revoking the 1963 Law No. 7 on the prohibition of strikes and lockouts in companies and strategic bodies.

Comprising 18 chapters and 159 articles, the bill has been drafted as an umbrella law for the 14 labor regulations made between 1887, during the Dutch colonial period, and 1969.

Stability

Vedi said he was not surprised by the bill's tight regulations given "the New Order government's obsession with political stability".

"Since the beginning of the New Order, the government has emphasized control and the demobilization of worker's social power," he said.

Vedi said he regretted that the government still blamed "third parties" when they faced with industrial action.

"It's nonsense, the government patronizes workers when it suggests that they have no capacity to do anything by themselves."

Vedi said that national development had produced a more educated workforce.

Vedi learnt this firsthand while attending many workers' meetings for his doctoral dissertation at Murdoch University titled Contradictions of Corporatism: Workers and the State in New Order Indonesia.

In his research, Vedi found a new culture among workers in which they were more aware of their rights, struggled harder for their rights and were more capable of working through organizations they had set up independently.

Vedi said the new culture grew from workers' awareness that their struggle in Jakarta and other big urban centers was their future and that they could not go back to village life.

"Thirty years ago they might go to Jakarta for a short time, but now there is no work in the villages and the land for farming has shrunk.

"That is one of the reasons why recently there have been strikes, a rise in industrial unrest and the emergence of labor organizations," he said.

Internationalization

He said Indonesia's emergence as a center for labor-intensive manufacturing had also contributed to the new culture.

"Automatically, it accelerates the development and maturation of the new industrial working class, something which did not exist 20 to 30 years ago," Vedi said.

But he said internationalization had also worked against the interests of workers in that the mobility of capital weakened the relative power of workers.

"Capital puts pressure on government to create 'comfortable' conditions for it," Vedi said.

He said one of the reasons investors wanted to invest in Indonesia was that labor was cheap and obedient and the country was politically stable.

"Now that other countries offer the same conditions, the government is taking tight control of worker unions to please investors," he said.

Vedi said the competitive potential of labor in Indonesia was weakened further by the government's obsession with political stability.

"Industrial unrest causes the government to feel uncomfortable" he said.

But he said labor strikes were increasing because better education has helped increase workers' awareness of their rights.

Vedi said the government should not put tighter controls on workers through the manpower bill. "It won't work. There will always be strikes because workers aspirations are yet to be accommodated."

The labor issue was a complex economic, sociological and political problem that had to be handled with several simultaneous approaches, Vedi said.