Ministry plans suspension of autonomy in labor field

Ridwan Max Sijabat, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

In response to increased complaints, the manpower and transmigration ministry has proposed taking over from the regions certain authorities in the field of labor.

Manpower and transmigration minister Jacob Nuwa Wea said he had asked the regions to return the authority over labor inspections, labor dispute mediation and labor training to help improve general labor conditions.

"Despite this being the era of reform, labor conditions have remained poor mainly because of the weak enforcement of the labor laws and a lack of political commitment by the government in general to improve worker welfare," he said during the closing ceremony for the national meeting of the Association of Indonesian Industrial Relation Dispute Mediators here on Wednesday.

Nuwa Wea said that entering the fourth year of regional autonomy, labor inspections of industrial areas and small and medium-scale factories remained weak because most inspectors had been moved to jobs outside their areas of expertise.

"The merger of 26 local offices into 12, including the offices for labor, transmigration and social affairs, caused regional administrations to cut the number of labor inspectors and labor dispute mediators and move them into jobs outside their own competence.

"We had 1,300 labor inspectors who were specially trained for nine months in 2000, but that number has been reduced to about 600 because most of them have been moved and promoted to other jobs or positions. We also had 1,500 certified mediators in 2000 but their number now is 800, and as a consequence many labor disputes cannot be settled in a tripartite forum because of the shortages of mediators," he said.

He said several of the 49 vocational training centers in the regions had closed their doors and many instructors and certified trainers had resigned because provincial and regency administrations showed little concern for the issue of training workers.

Several provinces and regencies have already offered to allow the manpower ministry to take control of certain labor issues, but this has not yet been approved by President Megawati Soekarnoputri.

"We have coordinated with the home minister and the minister for administrative reform to allow the manpower ministry to take over certain labor issues until the regions are ready to handle these issues," Nuwa Wea said.

The director general for industrial relations at the manpower and transmigration ministry, Musni Tambusai, who accompanied Nuwa Wea to the ceremony, said the increasing number of labor disputes, strikes and public complaints over poor labor conditions in factories was partly the result of the excesses of regional autonomy.

"According to our records, only 30 percent of industrial disputes can be settled at the bipartite and tripartite levels, while 70 percent go to the local and central committees for labor dispute settlements (P4Ds and P4P), causing many industrial disputes to be held up in the P4P for years," he said.

He said the P4P, which is scheduled to be disbanded by the end of this year, has a backlog of more than 4,500 cases, which it is unlikely to hear by the end of December.

Law No. 2/2004 on the settlement of industrial disputes will take effect in January, allowing both workers and employers to take disputes to a labor court and the Supreme Court.

With the new law, both employers and workers will be allowed to go to government mediators, conciliators or arbitrators within 30 days if they fail to resolve a dispute at the bipartite level. If they fail to reach a peaceful settlement, both sides are then allowed to go to the labor court and appeal to the Supreme Court, in a process meant to ensure all industrial disputes are settled within three months.

Musni said his directorate was recruiting about 800 new law school graduates to be trained as mediators and stationed in industrial zones and regencies and mayoralties over the next five years.

"For the time being, we will depend on the existing mediators to mediate industrial disputes, and many cases for the first years will go to the labor court while we are training new mediators. But our main program is to help encourage employers and workers and labor unions to create better labor conditions so that disputes between workers and employers can be settled at the bipartite or tripartite level," he said.