Ridwan Max Sijabat, Jakarta – The government admitted Wednesday that the weak enforcement of industrial relations laws has left millions of workers unprotected in thousands of companies nationwide.
Director general for industrial relations and labor standards at the Manpower Ministry, Suwito, said increasing labor strikes and industrial disputes were a reflection of lacking government workplace inspections and the overall weak enforcement of the Labor Law.
"It looks impossible to ensure employers' compliance with the Labor Law to provide normative and social protection for their workers because the government has only 1,800 labor inspectors, while the number of medium- and large-scale companies to be supervised has reached almost 179,000. The ratio is 1:10 and supervision under such a ratio is not effective," he said after presenting the results of an industrial relations inspection of the airline industry here.
Suwito said the weak supervision of labor laws was also connected with the implementation of regional autonomy, which has led to the promotion of some inspectors to other sections of government.
"The Manpower and Transmigration Ministry can no longer extend its hands to supervise the inspectors under regional autonomy. Besides, many regions have appointed unauthorized officers as labor inspectors," he said.
Chairman of the Indonesian Employers' Association (Apindo), Sofjan Wanandi, said recently that many labor inspectors had not engaged with employers to force the latter to comply with the Labor Law, but to extort them.
The government's inspection of the airline industry revealed that many airline companies, including national flag carrier Garuda Indonesia, have yet to register their crew members and ground staff in obligatory social security programs (Jamsostek).
Suwito acknowledged the inspection was not conducted in accordance with official procedures, but added that inspectors only interviewed certain officers of the violating airline companies.
"The violating airline companies have pledged to register all their employees with Jamsostek," he said.
He said that because of the weak enforcement of the Labor Law by relevant authorities, only 7.9 million of the 28 million workers registered with Jamsostek have remained active members.
The Manpower and Transmigration Minister said recently he would enhance cooperation with the police and the Attorney General's Office to take action against companies violating the 1992 Social Security Law.
Meanwhile, the president of state-owned PT Jamsostek, Hotbonar Sinaga, called on the government to fully enforce the law in order to push employers to join the social security programs.
"Employers should treat their workers as their main asset and partners and provide them legal protection and maximum benefits through the social security programs," he said.
He said that Jamsostek did not have the authority to conduct investigations or force employers to comply with labor laws.
Hotbonar added that many employers have registered only a portion of their workers or understated their gross monthly salaries when paying their insurance premiums to Jamsostek.
"Such violations have been proven by the low compensation received by relatives of workers killed in occupational accidents, airplane crashes and ship mishaps," he said.