B. Herry-Priyono, Jakarta – For a few months in 1981, I was a casual worker at a pharmaceutical factory in Central Java. Then between 1992 and 1995, I had the privilege of working among the urban poor, including industrial workers, in Greater Jakarta. It was a period when the confidence of the New Order regime was at its peak. In the span of 15 years I witnessed the gradual process that has led to the present condition of labor.

It is the memory of those years that haunts me these days. A week ago the streets of Central Jakarta were hit by traffic congestion due to massive protests against planned revisions to the 2003 Labor Law.

By April 7, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his staff promised to reformulate the law based on three interests: "Protection of the rights and welfare of workers, business growth in the country and economic expansion." (The Jakarta Post, April 8, 2006)

Reconciling these three interests may appear uncomplicated when one has never had any experience with the day-to-day plight of workers. Even more, the task is greatly assisted by the current grammar of mainstream economics. Nowhere in the current parlance is economic expansion conceived as coming from the protection of workers' rights and welfare. In any case, expansion is conceived as a direct outcome of business growth, with the caveat that the term "business" has little to do with small enterprises, but rather with big or giant firms.

Indeed, there is already a built-in bias in the grammar of mainstream economics that runs against workers' rights and welfare. It is therefore heartening to learn that the three-party forum on the new Labor Law will consult five academic communities, i.e. Gadjah Mada University, Padjadjaran University, University of Indonesia, Hasanuddin University and University of North Sumatra.

But the built-in bias embedded in current economic thought should forewarn us against any assumed impartiality. The danger is to claim the built-in bias as scientific impartiality. If this is how the redrafting of the Labor Law will be done, there is no point in consulting experts, for we know in advance that it has nothing to do with impartiality.

Part of the bias is rooted in the well-known process in which financial capital has gradually assumed primacy over labor. This was done by attaching prices to capital. The price of capital is identified with the waiting time, and the longer the gestation period involved in the working of capital, the higher the returns to be claimed by capital.

It is through this process that labor, let alone manual labor, is conceived as a mere appendix to the powers of capital. Coupled with the law of scarcity applied to the prices of capital against the abundant reserve of labor, the priority of investors over workers is bound to have an appearance of necessity.

This bias has nothing to do with scientific judgment, be it economics or something else, but with the dictates of power. Since "dictates of power" is too heartless a term, many would shyly use "realism principle", but in fact the term "realism" is a mask for the brute dictates of power. It is through this process that we are all now at the mercy of investors.

No wonder that the main policy instrument to solve unemployment is conceived of in terms of all imaginable favors to investors. It is indeed urgent to remind us that from the very start there has been an unequal footing in the relationship between investors and workers, and this inequality is reinforced by an academic bias in favor of the former.

It is against this backdrop that even a modest advocacy for workers' plight is deemed as ideological, while the dictates of investors' power is perceived as scientific. There is no doubt that we need higher economic growth. For policy makers, growth is understood in terms of reducing unemployment.

For investors, however, unemployment is beside the point, for surely they invest not to solve the unemployment problem. Since employment is a noble idiom in policy making, the unemployment rate is then turned into a deadly weapon by which investors compel policy makers to meet their demands.

In mechanistic terms, 1 percent of economic growth absorbed about 400,000 new job seekers before 1994, but between 2000 and 2004 1 percent growth absorbed only 215,000 new job seekers. After 2004, that figure had dropped further to 178,000 job seekers. Again, this fall has also been turned into a deadly weapon in the form of an argument that the only way to halt the drop is to make the labor market flexible.

Flexible labor market is a face that wears many masks. If it is a way to increase worker discipline and productivity, no thoughtful person will oppose it. But in real terms, it is often simply a license to fire workers more easily, regardless of their Spartan discipline. If this sounds inconceivable, ask many ordinary workers in Tangerang or other industrial belts. They will share flesh-and-blood stories about such practices, which surely are never heard during seminars at five-star hotels.

With a flexible labor market at work, investors are expected to be bolder in hiring more labor, which, like magic, will reduce the unemployment rate. If this is how things work, there will surely be a nirvana, at least for policy makers.

But with the widespread practice of easy layoffs under the rubric of flexible labor market, what may take place is simply rotating employment and unemployment among job seekers. It is here that the mechanistic way of thinking about the solutions to unemployment hits its limits.

For those without access to the handsome powers of investors, the initial condition has always been characterized by unequal footing. This unpleasant fact cannot but be taken seriously by the drafters of the new Labor Law. And, hopefully, the academic communities that will be consulted will not confuse the dictates of power with scientific judgment.

Otherwise, what is claimed as scientific judgment will further breed, to borrow the poignant title of a book about the current conditions of labor, La Mishre du Monde (the misery of the world).

[The writer, a postgraduate lecturer at Driyarkara School of Philosophy in Jakarta, holds a PhD from The London School of Economics.]