Manpower bill `infringes workers rights'

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.