Angela Dewan – For years big-name manufacturers including Honda, Samsung and Nike have quietly harvested profits from factories in Indonesia, where wages are even lower than in China or India.
Now, Indonesian workers are hitting back with a wave of industrial strikes, demanding a bigger chunk of profits in one of Southeast Asia's fastest growing economies.
In the latest major strike factories on the outskirts of Jakarta, producing car parts, electronics and big-brand trainers, fell silent on January 27, when more than 20,000 workers walked off the job.
Demanding a minimum wage increase, the Bekasi-based workers blocked a toll road to the capital, leaving trucks and traffic snarled for 10 hours.
"We had no choice but to stop everything and block this road," said 37-year-old Sarjo Suragil, who makes McDonald's and KFC packaging for Australian company Detpak & Detmold. "We've already met with the local government and authorities, but no one listened to us. We can't get by on these wages."
As industrial action spreads across the vast archipelago of 240 million people, workers realise the more disruptive their protests, the more likely they are to be heard.
Factories in the Bekasi zone make products for global car, electronics and fashion firms, churning out $4.5 billion in goods a year, government figures show.
The Bekasi workers were enraged after a court annulled a provincial minimum wage increase from 1.29 million rupiah ($143) per month to 1.49 million rupiah ($165). After the workers hit the streets, the governor reissued the wage increase that same night.
The government, celebrating a record $20 billion in foreign investment last year, is keen to keep a lid on industrial action that could scare away investors.
The Indonesian Employers Association argues that quick wage hikes could do just that. "If wages go up that quickly, foreign investors in several industries might start looking elsewhere," warned Franky Sibarani, the association's secretary-general.
West Java is the eighth province where workers have won a major wage hike of more than 14 percent in recent months, and those in other provinces are planning similar action.
Workers have been emboldened by the success of a three-month strike at a giant gold and copper mine owned by US company Freeport that ended in December, with a 37 percent pay rise on the $1.50 hourly minimum wage, analysts say. It was the longest strike in Indonesia's recent history.
"After the Freeport case, workers around Jakarta and West Java started looking at what was going on there and thought perhaps we can get wages a good deal higher too," Chris Manning from the Australian National University said.
In another case last month, an Indonesian factory producing Nike shoes agreed to the demands of thousands of disgruntled employees and shelled out $1 million in unpaid overtime wages.
The Indonesian Workers Association said recently it would target all pressure points of Indonesia's economy to win more wage increases.
"We will shut down the stock exchange next if we have to. We've been inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement," chairman Timbul Siregar said. "We will keep interfering with economic activity until we start to see the gap between rich and poor narrow."
The World Bank ranks more than 56 percent of Indonesians as middle class, classified as those who spend between $2 and $20 a day. In 2003 only 38 percent fitted that category. More Indonesians are climbing the social ladder as the economy, which grew an estimated 6.5 percent last year, continues to boom.
But Indonesian factory workers still remain some of the lowest-paid in Asia, usually making between $100 to $200 a month. Similar workers in China now earn just over $300 a month, according to a 2010 survey by Japan External Trade Organisation, followed by Malaysia ($298), India ($269) and Thailand ($263).
The success of strikes is also a sign that Indonesia's 14-year-old democracy is starting to blossom, analysts say. Under the 32-year Suharto dictatorship only one official workers confederation was recognised, but today there are four such organisations and 11,000 workplace unions.
"It's taken a long time for unions to consolidate after being repressed for so long, and that's part of the reason we're seeing a surge in these actions now," Manning said.