The Condition of the Working Class in Indonesia

| The life of the working class--especially those regarded as the blue
| collar workers--in Indonesia at the time of the New Order was very
| tragic. Seen from the income point of view, Indonesian labour costs
| stand on the lowest rank in the world. The minimum wages regulation,
| which aims to protect the wages of the worker, actually creates many
| problems. Firstly, because the regulation stresses only the nominal
| value of the minimum wages, and so it neglects the wages ratio gap, so
| it tends to create a polarization in the workers' wages.

| | Second, the minimum wages regulation is often used by the employers to
| legitimise paying their workers a wage not far above the regulated
| minimum. Research conducted by the research and development institution
| of the Manpower Department, found that 78,38 percent of all the
| corporations in six provinces in Indonesia, i.e. Jakarta, West, Jave,
| Middle Java, Jogjakarta, East Java and North Sumatra, paid their workers
| wages below or not much above the regulated minimum, although those
| corporations had an optimal profit. Third, the regulated minimum wage
| was often not compatible with the minimum physical requirements
| standard, whereas the first consideration for a regulated minimum wages
| is the minimum physical requirements standard.

| | Furthermore, although the nominal rate of the regulated minimum wages
| tends to increase from time to time, the real rate tends to decrease,
| because the rate of inflation is always higher than the increase of the
| regulated minimum wages. These conditions contribute to the
| impoverishment of the Indonesian working class.

| | There are other phenomena which emerge, so that the pay situation in
| Indonesia is very bad. Research by Mather (1985) and Wolf (1986) in
| Tangerang, West Java and Ungaran, Middle Java, found that the factory
| workers were still subsidized by their family in the villages, because
| the wages that they received in the city were too low. At the same time,
| the workers who already had a family, usually mobilized all of the
| family members to work. There were also some workers who worked extra
| hours to get overtime pay, as a solution to the problem of low wages.

| | Many of the workers problems in Indonesia, like unsuitable wages, work
| status, social security, occupational health and safety, overtime pay,
| arbitrary acts by the employer, excessive working hours, etc., can be
| categorized as human rights violations. The Marsinah case, which cause
| an uproar in 1993, was one example of how inhuman is treatment received
| by the Indonesian working class.

| | Another problem, also important, is the problem of the legal protection
| for workers in the non-formal sector. All labour laws applying until now
| have been only for the workers in the formal sector, so that those in
| the informal sector are more vulnerable to arbitrary treatment. Beside
| that, there is also a problem regarding employees in government business
| enterprises. These government workers do not have any legal institution
| with the authority to handle disputes between them and their employers.
| The P4 (Industrial Conflict Resolution Committee) only has authority to
| handle worker-employer conflict in the private sector.

| | The economic crisis, which started in July 1997, made the condition of
| the working class in Indonesia worse and worse. Up to the end of March
| 1998, one million people had lost their job in the construction and
| property sector. As in the banking sector, there is around 50.000
| workers which already lost their job, while in the garment and textile
| sector 300.000 workers had lost their jobs. As for the wages problem,
| although the manpower minister, Fahmi Idris, increased the regulated
| minimum wage by 15 percent, this doesn't mean a lot in improving
| workers' conditions in a time of the economic crisis. It is estimated
| that the new regulated minimum could only fulfill 75,8 percent of the
| minimum physical requirements.

| | The poor condition of the Indonesian working class is a logical
| consequence of its weak bargaining position vis a vis employers and the
| state, as a group with interests in the industrial relations system.
| This weak bargaining position is caused by several factors. First,
| because the oversupply of the labour force in Indonesia, makes the
| employer easy to kick out any "recalcitrant" workers and recruit new
| ones. Second, the industrialization process in Indonesia involves sunset
| industry development, including industry relocated from another
| countries. Third, the strong state control over workers' political
| activity in Indonesia. The state, with its repressive and ideological
| apparatus, continually tries to suppress the political activity of the
| Indonesian working class. Fourth, the increasing international capital
| mobility also weakens the bargaining position of the global working
| class, including the Indonesian workers. Will the condition of the
| Indonesian working class improve under the Gus Dur-Megawati government?
| The answer will be determined in practice, and by the development of the
| social structure which workers face. Also by the actions of the
| Indonesian working class in confronting that social structure.

By Zaki Husserin. The Indonesian version of this article was published in Rakyat Merdeka,
| an Indonesian local newspaper, at December 20, 1999.