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Workers organised, troops mobilised

Source
Sydney Morning Herald - July 4, 1998

Louise Williams, Jakarta – On the first day the strike seemed pretty ordinary: hundreds of steel workers milling outside the factory gates on the industrial fringe of Jakarta demanding better food, time off to pray and better wages to cope with rocketing prices.

But, by day two, the crowd had swollen to thousands as the local shanty town dwellers joined in. When a scuffle broke out troops guarding the factory opened fire with rubber bullets, in breach of crowd control procedures. Twenty-three people were taken to hospital, the strike put down with the sort of violence used against workers by the former Soeharto regime, despite the new Habibie Government's claims of reform.

The rising anger of Indonesia's workers and the inability of the system to deal with it are raising fears that labour unrest will become a flashpoint as the Indonesian economy continues to deteriorate.

Every day workers are taking to the streets over mass lay-offs and wages which can no longer meet even the most basic daily requirements. New statistics released this week predict 98.5 million people – 48 per cent of the population – will be living below the poverty line by the end of the year. Many of these will still be working, but the new minimum wage of 198,000 rupiah a month ($21) announced this week covers only 75 per cent of a family's basic calorie needs.

In the industrial hub of Surabaya in east Java recently 10,000 workers marched through the city, the docks were closed by strikes and the massive Maspion factory employing 30,000 people also closed. Thousands of striking workers from a nearby plastic bag factory, seeking food and transport allowances, surrounded their boss's house. Only marines stood between them and his family.

After the shootings in Jakarta, textile workers in central Java marched in their thousands to the local Government offices to demand better conditions. "When you have mass of hungry people that is a precondition for mass rioting. We are also seeing a willingness on the part of the Government and the security apparatus to treat people the same way as they did in the past," said a labour expert, Mr Vedi Hadiz. "Economically, labour is so weak now you can shoot them and they will go back to work, but the long-term consequences are very bad."

Theoretically, these should be better times for Indonesian workers. Under the former Soeharto government workers had almost no rights. Those who wanted to unionise were forced to join the one government-controlled union. Rebel union leader, Mr Muchtar Pakpahan, was jailed and his union outlawed.

In one of the most blatant scandals of the dying days of the Soeharto regime, funds from a workers pension fund were used to pay off members of Parliament to push through a labour bill which banned cross-industry industrial action and prevented workers from marching in the streets.

When President Habibie came to power in late May, one of his first actions was to release Mr Pakpahan, legalise his Indonesian Prosperous Workers Union, and announce that workers had 90 days to form new unions.

Mr Pakpahan called a massive street protest against President Habibie, a close friend of former president Soeharto, to keep up the pressure for reform. At dawn on the day of the protest, soldiers sealed off the streets leading to Mr Pakpahan's office, trapping a small groups of bus drivers inside. In the face of overwhelming military opposition the protest was called off.

"There are two simultaneous processes going on," said Mr Hadiz. "On the one hand you have mass retrenchments and unemployment... and the workers who still have jobs are getting increasingly desperate because wages are not keeping up with prices. But, on the other hand, workers have been reinvigorated by the process of political change which is occurring." Another labour specialist commented: "We are at a psychological turning point. People are getting more desperate because they have less to lose."

During the decades under Mr Soeharto, workers had so few rights they barely existed as a political force. Now, Mr Pakpahan has announced the formation of a labour party and new networks of unions are springing up across the country.

But Indonesia as yet has no formal channels to deal with conflict between workers and their employers. The absence of mechanisms for negotiation pushes conflicts back on the streets.

At the same time, the masses of angry unemployed on the streets are easily provoked into joining rallies. "There are lots of unemployed, desperate people floating around," Mr Hadiz said. "That sort of situation can easily degenerate into rioting and the military's first impulse will be to prevent that happening." Union leaders are fearful that chaos will be used as an excuse to turn back the clock and reimpose restrictions on workers. The Government has already announced that a new draft regulation is being prepared to limit demonstrations without a police permit to 100 people.

But Mr Pakpahan warns that he will mobilise tens of thousands of workers on the street if reform stalls. The next flashpoint was announced this week – a 15 per cent increase in the minimum wage which many employers, themselves facing bankruptcy, are likely to resist.

Mr Hadiz warns that the Government "should be looking at the situation with a greater sense of urgency because how Indonesia will look politically and socially in 10 years time is being determined now".

Long-gone pedicabs in short-lived return to Jakarta The slow, graceful swish of the pedicab returned to the choking streets of Jakarta this week, the sun-browned riders offering their bicycle-propelled seats in the Indonesian capital for the first time in 10 years. A decade ago the pedicab, once a sight in the streets of all of Asia's major cities and towns, was deemed a symbol of backwardness and poverty.

In the name of progress the Jakarta municipal authorities launched a war against pedicab drivers, often themselves the poorest of the poor with no education or skills to make a living in any other way. Jakarta's pedicabs were rounded up and unceremoniously dumped into the sea. City authorities say at least three officials died in the bitter battles against people trying to protect these simple public transport vehicles from extinction.

Many locals who had grown up shopping at the outdoor markets, with the pedicabs on standby, were devastated to see them go, replaced instead by the noisy, smoke-belching bemo three-wheelers and diesel buses. Late last week Jakarta's Governor, Mr Sutiyoso, announced that pedicabs – or becaks as they are locally known – would again be permitted to ply Jakarta's streets, as a way of providing job opportunities for the unemployed during the severe economic crisis.

But on Wednesday, under pressure from officials who had fought the war 10 years earlier, he changed his mind and banned them again. "I apologise," he said. "I should protect the wider interest of creating traffic order in the city. People who want to make a living must look for other kinds of work. I ask you drivers to return to the places you came from."

But even as the ban was reinstated, scores of pedicabs were waiting eagerly by the footpaths, the peak-hour traffic barrelling down Jakarta's wide, crowded roads. Officials estimate 1,200 pedicabs were brought into the capital in less than a week, and now a new battle looms to get them out.

"There is no other work. It is very difficult to ride with the pollution in Jakarta," said one of a group of drivers who had been brought into Jakarta from Central Java by an entrepreneur. "Why doesn't the Government like the pedicabs?" asked one by-stander. "They are ashamed of them. They are a symbol of poverty, of our difficulties. They create traffic jams in the cities. But there are no other jobs."

The take-home profit from a day which begins at 6am and finishes at 10pm is about 1,000 rupiah, or 12 cents, the drivers say. They live in cheap boarding houses and eat cheap meals off the

streets, but it is better than unemployment. A short ride down the laneways which run off the main roads nets 1,000 rupiah, a longer ride 1,500, compared with more than 2,000 rupiah for a motorised three-wheeler.

Now, Jakarta's mayors say they will give the becak owners two months to remove the vehicles from the city and send them back to the provincial towns, where the cool, smooth swish of the bicycles still rules the streets.

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