A contentious battle between Nike and laborers at a factory in Serang, Banten, was settled on Wednesday with $1 million in unpaid overtime being awarded to some 4,500 workers there.

The settlement, arrived at after 11 months of investigations and negotiations spurred by a nongovernmental organization and a trade union representing workers at Nike's Nikomas sneaker factory in Serang, is meant to cover almost 600,000 hours of overtime pay that workers said they never received over the past two years.

According to US-based NGO Educating for Justice, which spearheaded the campaign against the factory, the million-dollar payout will be distributed in two installments – the first on Jan. 20 and the second on Feb. 5.

Educating for Justice said in a statement released Wednesday that the settlement between Serikat Pekerja Nasional (National Workers Union) and the factory's management was a victory, but fell far short of total monies allegedly withheld from workers over the past 18 years due to a two-year statute of limitations in Indonesian law.

"This is justice served," said Jim Keady, director of Educating for Justice. "It took 11 months of work and we had to fight through denials and outright lies by the management, but the workers persevered and we won."

Bambang Wirahyoso, the national chairman of SPN, said that the settlement could have far-reaching implications for workers in Indonesia.

"This has the potential to send shockwaves through the Indonesian labor movement. Now that a precedent has been established, the leadership at SPN is gearing up to take on the fight for the Adidas and Puma workers at Nikomas who also have been subjected to forced overtime without pay. We have only just begun."