The nation's truck, bus and taxi drivers are demanding a law regulating wages, employment conditions and social insurance for the sector.
The workers will carry their demands to next week's May Day labor rally, which will be held on May 1, a traditional day of activism for the international labor movement.
"Land transportation drivers are not covered by the 2003 Labor Law because we're not regarded as laborers," coordinator of the Indonesian Transportation Labor Union of Struggle, Ilham Syah, said Saturday. Drivers sign a so-called "partnership contract" when they start work with a company.
"It's a manipulation of words. Partnership means an equal relationship. That's not the case here because there is no opportunity for wage negotiation. (Wages) are already set by the company," Ilham said.
"We never receive a monthly salary even though we're bound to work for only one particular company." Wage standardization is needed for the drivers of taxis, buses, minibuses and trucks, he said.
Truck drivers pocket their daily payment in the form of commissions, while public transport drivers get their daily income after paying a minimum amount to the companies they work for.
Jakarta's Blue Bird taxi drivers, for example, have to pay Rp 585,000 (US$64.28) a day for an income commission worth Rp 130,000. A Blue Bird driver who is also a member of the union, Widodo, said: "In reality, most of the time we can only pay Rp 300,000 for a Rp 20,000 daily commission, after over 12 hours roving around the streets."
Not all taxi companies provide commissions like Blue Bird. "Drivers speed up while driving mainly because they have to rush to meet their daily targets. Human error by land transportation workers is always the scapegoat every time an accident happens," Ilham said.
"Yet the government never acknowledges the reason behind those accidents, particularly the blurred wage system set for the transportation workers. The government must issue a law to protect land transportation workers which will then also protect those who use their services."
Other problems faced by drivers are illegal fees, such as those faced daily by container truck drivers coming in and out of the port at Jakarta's Tanjung Priok.
"Illegal fees are commonly charged by officials of the state-owned port operator PT Pelabuhan Indonesia, Customs and Excise, the Jakarta Transportation Agency and police officers, as well as thugs being backed-up by officials," Ilham said.
Truck drivers receive Rp 400,000 in travel expenses, of which Rp 300,000 is to buy gasoline, up to Rp 40,000 is to pay tolls and some Rp 50,000 is to pay illegal fees. The drivers also get a commission of between Rp 30,000 and Rp 50,000 for a round trip from the harbor to warehouses.
"We usually can do only one round trip a day due to the time-consuming process of loading and unloading cargo," Ilham said, adding that drivers sometimes still had to pay illegal fees from their own pockets.
Some 3,000 container trucks service the port at Tanjung Priok. "We have to stand by at the garage for a trip order most of the day," Ilham said.
However, only around 40 percent of trucking companies provide stand-by money for their drivers. The money, which is only Rp 10,000 to Rp 20,000, is not in line with the minimum standard for stand-by money stipulated by the Labor Law. The minimum stand-by money stipulated by the law is Rp 33,000 a day, which is around one-thirtieth of the Jakarta monthly minimum wage.