New bill on right to form unions passed

JAKARTA (JP): The House of Representatives on Monday unanimously passed a new bill on the rights of workers to unionize.

Minister of Manpower Bomer Pasaribu and legislators separately said that the law gives more assurance to workers' rights to organize compared to previous laws.

In a departure from previous policies, civil servants are now explicitly given the right to unionize. The law also mandates the government to issue a new regulation on the establishment of unions by civil servants. For decades they were obligated to join the Indonesian Civil Servants' Corps (Korpri), which is not a union.

Speaking at a House plenary session, Bomer said the new law also guarantees freedom for those who do not want to join unions, in line with the 1948 Convention on the Freedom of Association of the International Labor Organization.

"The guarantee of freedom of association is reflected in the simple requirements to form a union, which is the need for only 10 workers," Bomer said. Past regulations require at least 25 workers to form one union.

The law also states that one of the functions of a union is to organize, execute, and be accountable for workers' strikes.

An earlier ministerial decree defined unions as organizations which channel members' aspirations and that they are "a partner of management and government in building harmonious industrial relations based on principles of Pancasila."

Critics earlier said the guarantee of the right to strike was missing in the draft of the bill.

The law states that dissolution of a union could be done by its members, by the closure of the company, or by a court order. The court could move to dissolve a union if it was considered to have endangered security as defined in the Criminal Code.

Romawati Sinaga of the National Front for Indonesian Workers Struggle, which is preparing a joint statement to reject the bill, said only members should be allowed to dissolve a union.

Bomer said that "there should be no concerns about this because the prerequisites for a court to disband a union are very limited, namely when the union has committed a crime against the state."

The law also covers the establishment of federations, formed by at least five unions, and confederations, comprised of at least three federations. The structure of such unions are determined by their respective statutes.

A worker may only be a member of one union in one company. (10)