![]() “They are shouting, making noises … and the government backs down,” he says. In January, protesters shut down the highway between Bekasi and Jakarta for just one day before the government called an emergency meeting with labor leaders and the Indonesian Employers’ Association (APINDO).Īnother strike is planned for September, when KSPI will call for an end to outsourcing.īut these techniques and demands are the product of “radicals,” says APINDO chairman Sufjan Wanandi. ![]() And the upstart unions are eager to flex their respective muscles. Of the 12,000 workers at the Epsom plant in Bekasi, only 700 are members of FSPMI, but that number has doubled in the past three months. The labor movement is still small, but it’s growing. At the moment, none of her company’s 200 workers are unionized. ![]() “If we become members of a trade union, we can negotiate wages and welfare,” Damayanti says. Rather than relying on government intervention, Damayanti and a dozen of her colleagues came to FSPMI’s makeshift field headquarters last week to learn about organizing. The 3,000 companies in Bekasi’s industrial parks employ close to half a million workers, but there are only 20 governmental labor inspectors to oversee the district, according to Roni Febrianto of the Federation of Indonesian Metal Workers Union (FSPMI), a member organization to KSPI and an active union in Bekasi. “After two years, we must become permanent.” The company tells them there is no more work, but when the old workers leave, new ones are brought in for training, she says. ![]() In recent weeks, 70 percent of the factory’s workers have been laid off. “This is a crime,” says Devi Damayanti, a 22-year-old line production worker at PTA Accupix, a Korean company that manufactures 3D glasses and other items for electronics giant LG.ĭamayanti has been working at the factory in Bekasi, about 30 km east of Jakarta, since it opened two years ago. Needless to say, they are cheaper to employ than contracted workers. Outsourced workers have no job security, no compensation if fired, no health care and no yearly raises. By law, most large companies are required to hire a worker after two years, but a study by KSPI and NGOs AKATIGA and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung in 2010 found that more than 80 percent of jobs in labor-intensive industries such as textile manufacturing were outsourced, meaning a third-party company employed the workers, bypassing conventional employer-employee contracts. The past 15 years of Indonesian democracy have added huge layers of bureaucracy and regulation to the law books, but according to Iqbal, many of those regulations either fall short or lack enforcement. Low wages, lack of health care and precarious work conditions are the primary targets of Indonesia’s burgeoning labor movement. The minimum wage in Indonesia ranges from about $100 a month to about $280, depending on the region. This dichotomy - a large consumer base and low labor costs - is a powerful draw for billion-dollar, multi-national manufacturers who promise to bring increased employment but could make reforms more difficult, especially if the country’s main attraction is cheap labor, advocates like Iqbal say.įor Indonesian workers, the country’s economic surge has been a double-edged sword. The only Southeast Asian member of the G20, Indonesia’s economy grew 6.4 percent in 2011. A domestic market of almost 240 million people consumes about 70 percent of country’s output, even as Indonesia ranks in the bottom half of the world in per capita GDP. While the adverse publicity and growing labor shortages in China have reportedly improved working conditions there, critics are scrutinizing the company’s recent diversification to other low-wage nations: Malaysia, Mexico, Brazil, Vietnam, and now, Indonesia.īut analysts and industry leaders here say Foxconn’s interest in Indonesia makes perfect business sense. “We believe they want to use outsourced workers, and not follow the labor law,” says Said Iqbal, chairman of the Confederation of Indonesian Trade Unions (KSPI) and part of a small but ambitious labor movement in Indonesia.įoxconn has faced a firestorm of international media attention over its labor practices in China, where it has 13 factories. Some are particularly suspicious of the motives of controversial Apple equipment manufacturer Foxconn, which recently announced plans to set up a plant near Jakarta by the end of the year, investing as much as $10 billion over five to 10 years. JAKARTA, Indonesia - Labor organizers in Indonesia are struggling to improve working conditions as a flood of global industrialists inundate the country, attracted by its low-wage culture.
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