Resistance to occupational safety

Resistance to occupational safety

By Melody Kemp

JAKARTA (JP): Watching the construction of luxury apartments
that are soon to be an extension of one of the most prestigious
hotels in the city is quite fascinating.

The construction workers wear neither hard hats nor protective
foot wear. The multistory site is not swathed in protective mesh
designed to catch errant flying tools. No barriers are erected on
the edge of each floor to prevent falls, nor are workers wearing
harnesses for high-rise tasks. The site itself is a mess,
spilling over onto the road. Why is this still allowed to happen?
This is after all, Jakarta, which prides itself on development
and modernity.

Similar appalling conditions were also to be seen recently at
the construction site next door to a hotel owned by Minister of
Manpower Abdul Latief.

Such horrible working conditions are far different from
construction sites in Vietnam, where construction sites are
tightly controlled -- safety-conscious scenes are comparable with
anything found in countries of the "North". Huge notice boards in
Vietnamese and English clearly spell out regulations to be
followed on site and remind contractors of the workers' rights to
participate, contribute to safety and stop work if safety is
compromised.

The issue of occupational health and safety arose two weeks
ago with the news in The Jakarta Post that 100 construction
workers had died so far this year. While this total is shocking,
even more shocking is the total number of deaths and crippling
injuries that are the darker side of industrial development in
Indonesia. The poor record-keeping and the employment systems
that keep many (women) workers on daily contracts, mean that one
can only hazard a guess at the actual dimension of deaths and
injuries per year. They would clearly outpace AIDS-related
deaths. And yet, while AIDS attracts millions of dollars of
funding, occupational (and vehicular) accidents barely raise a
murmur.

Occupational health and safety (OHS) represents the interface
between economic growth and social justice -- the ethics by which
capitalism is mediated. The adoption of and compliance with labor
codes on health and safety can be regarded as an indicator of the
degree to which a country is committed to the development of its
people, not merely economic growth for the few. Concepts of
sustainability in development need to give policy direction to
workers' rights to participate in workers' health and well-being
-- in addition to the enhancing their rights. They, after all,
fuel the economic trajectory taken by governments in their plans
for economic and social change.

Occupational health and safety have been regarded too long as
add-on's, rather than integral to the process of development, and
have come to represent the divide between "us and them".

Meanwhile, a scene of school children dangerously swerving and
linking arms as they ride bicycles also indicates that the
culture of safety cannot be assumed to exist in Indonesia.

The culture of safety is one in which each individual is
conscious of and integrally involved in the safety and well-being
of himself or herself and that of others. It implies taking
responsibility for one's actions, and having a sense of
consequence for both the individual and the wider community.

In a developed country, the culture of safety is learned at
school in social studies, in bicycle and road safety classes, and
through a simmering process of acculturation, in which one
recognizes and adheres to laws and regulations created for the
common good and which serve rich and poor alike.

In light of this, is there any room for what the great
intellectual Soedjatmoko referred to in 1977 as "moral vision"
which seeks "to redress the balance between economic efficiency
and justice, between competitiveness on one hand and a spirit of
sharing on the other", for surely preserving the health and
safety of workers, children and the community at large is the
greatest act of sharing and accordance of justice?

To appreciate the importance of OHS, one has to explore the
concept of risk. Many unenlightened foreigners typify Asian
concepts of risk as fatalistic -- one's life depending on the
mere roll of heavenly dice. However risk is based on logic and to
a lesser degree on maths. Bernstein, in his wonderful study of
risk, recounts that Arab invaders of India learned from the
Hindu's concepts of mathematics which they later transformed into
astronomy, navigation and commerce. Within that pattern of logic
based on mathematics, the concept of risk emerged in the Arabic
empires, countering the belief in randomness. This flame of
intellect was to be submerged with the Crusades and the
horrendously destructive burning of Islamic books of learning in
Spain and Baghdad. The Dark Ages descended, and fatalism did re-
emerge in the traumatized history.

But the logic and numbers took root elsewhere and have their
modern incarnation in risk management and assessment which, along
with safety engineering, occupational hygiene, medicine and OHS
education, ensures that all manner of firms maintain profitable
and productive profiles.

So what is going on in an Indonesia that espouses the rhetoric
of competitiveness and globalization and yet wastes the talents
of trained and skilled workers through lack of attention to the
spirit and the culture of OHS? Foreigners are wont to say: "Ah,
but in Indonesia life is cheap." What is true is that people have
limited rights and access to OHS education.

So how do Indonesian workers and managers achieve health
values? The major source is information and education. However,
at present no systematic way exists by which all Indonesian
workers can access OHS information and education. For various
reasons, the officially sanctioned trade union has a low
membership rate, and the labor-focused non-governmental
organizations (NGO), when not fighting for recognition and
battling accusations, do not have national coverage. They do not
have the capacity to inflict or influence change.

In addition, there seems little interest in devolving power to
the "stakeholders", in this case workers, which would allow them,
through the internationally recognized mechanism of self-
regulation mediated by worker/management safety committees, to
actively participate in their own OHS programs. This again stands
in startling contrast to Vietnam where trade unions and
government agencies are collaborating to train safety delegates,
particularly women, to record and report breaches of the tough
Labor Code. This approach was already implemented in some of the
small islands of the Pacific in the 1980s, so it cannot be simply
dismissed as "Western meddling".

Women in Indonesia seem to be leading the battle for workers
rights and human dignity. Their enthusiasm and intelligence,
despite rudimentary education was breathtaking and made me
realize the power and possibilities of national worker education
in OHS. Complex issues of chemical safety and ergonomics were
easily understood, as it was the currency of their lives.

But the dark side was the number of cases of cancer of the
bladder in young women textile workers, testimony to the use of
carcinogenic dyestuffs; and the reports of so many of the young
women whose bodies had stopped menstruating after they commenced
work.

Women, whose labor fuels the export-led industries that have
contributed to Indonesia's rapid growth, were already tired --
tired of the loud noises of the machinery which follows them
home, tired of the sexual harassment, tired of the forced
overtime, tired of the intense physical effort they had to put
into work, tired because their bosses said they would become lazy
if they were given comfortable chairs, so they labor for ten
hours per day on a stool.

But the tiredness faded and the lights went on. They lived
again. However as well-motivated and informed as they were, the
women came up against enormous and illogical resistance.

The battle for workers rights and human dignity is far from
over.

The writer is trainer in occupational health and safety.