SPSI members not maximizing union power: Official

SPSI members not maximizing union power: Official

By Ridwan M. Sijabat

JAKARTA (JP): Workers in Indonesia are not using the power at their disposal to further their interests, says a senior leader of the All Indonesian Workers Union (SPSI).

Wilhelmus Bokha, an assistant to SPSI's secretary-general, said the core problem in Indonesia's labor sector is not whether freedom of association is restricted or whether workers are free, but how workers utilize their freedom.

"Will it be effective for workers to set up many unions? What advantages will workers gain if they have too many unions?."

Indonesia could well learn from the experiences of other countries in managing worker unions, he told The Jakarta Post.

"The United States, one of the staunchest critics of Indonesia's labor condition, has only one labor union, the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO)," he said. "Many other countries are reducing the number of their unions in their efforts to improve workers' collective bargaining power."

Bokha was commenting on the seemingly endless criticism coming from a number of Western countries against the Indonesian government and their recognition of SPSI as the only union allowed to represent workers in negotiations with management.

SPSI is a federation of unions that, Bokha said, were consolidated in 1973 to strengthen the bargaining power of Indonesia's workers.

Now, after some reorganization and restructuring, the union is an umbrella organization representing 13 different trade unions, each one with the power and independence to set its own policies and programs.

The number of members could grow, he said, pointing out that journalists in Indonesia could also form their own trade union if they wanted, without government obstruction.

The debate on whether or not journalists are to be considered workers, however, continues at present. Some government officials say journalists are professional workers whose interests would be best represented through a professional association, and not a union.

Bokha said workers in Indonesia are free to form their own union, underlining that the right to organize is guaranteed by the 1945 Constitution as well as labor laws. "There has not been one instance in which workers were prevented from organizing themselves," he said.

He pointed out to two recent government regulations that further strengthened worker rights. The Minister of Manpower's Decree 438/1992 encourages workers to establish plant-level unions, while Decree 3/1993 stipulates that the government will recognize the existence of more than one union in the country.

Bokha said there are now more than 740 plant-level unions across Indonesia, most of which are in Jakarta and in surrounding industrial cities.

Asked about the Indonesian Prosperous Workers' Union (SBSI), which is not recognized by the government, he took the government line and pointed out that the union fails to meet the proper criteria because it was not established by workers.

The SBSI case has often been used by Indonesia's critics abroad to support their argument about the lack, or absence, of freedom of association for Indonesian workers.

Since 1992, when it was founded in defiance of the law, SBSI has regularly been in trouble with the government. Its founding chairman Mochtar Pakpahan is now serving time for organizing a massive workers' march that turned into a riot in Medan, North Sumatra, in April last year. A small reception to mark its third anniversary last week in Jakarta was cut short by the police.

Bokha acknowledges some shortcomings within the SPSI in the way it represent its members, which he attributes to the union's leaders and the way they are elected.

"Each year, we receive billions of rupiahs in foreign aid, but a bigger part of this money goes into the hands of the organization's officials," he said.

These officials are too busy dealing with foreign aid projects and have never been asked to account for the money, he said. "How can this organization be effective if its officials are too busy with their own projects?"

Bokha admitted, however, that many SPSI leaders in the central office and the regional offices were appointed by the government, and not elected by their members.

These union officials are simply using their terms in office to make the most for themselves, he added.