Ridwan Max Sijabat, Jakarta – Considering the current investment climate, industrial strikes are not the best way for workers to settle disputes with employers, a newly appointed official said Tuesday.

Director General of Industrial Relations and Workers' Social Security at the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry, Myra Maria Hanartani, said strikes would not only cost the employer but would end with labor dismissals.

Myra said the several strikes that had occurred in the past few months had also seen disputes left unresolved.

Asked to comment on the increasing industrial disputes, the new director said the relative manpower law guaranteed a worker's right to go on strike. "But this is not the only way to settle disputes with management, even though disputes are normative in nature," she said.

Myra was sworn in last week to replace Musni Tambusai and has already called on workers and employers to negotiate any further disputes rather than take strike action.

She said negotiating issues, rather than striking, would "avoid disharmony and... labor dismissals, outsourcing practices and operation halts".

Bipartite talks between workers and employers, as well as collective work agreements, were "better and realistic alternatives recommended by the law", she said.

"Negotiations should be given more space until peaceful settlements and agreements are reached."

Myra declined to provide further details but said industrial disputes staged in the past 10 months had caused millions of lost working hours and had decreased national export and productivity.

She said the disputes had ended with thousands of workers being "laid off". "Labor strikes have contributed to (a) poor investment climate (and) it is difficult for dismissed workers to get new jobs with such high unemployment rates," she said.

The total number of unemployed persons nationwide was estimated at some 10 percent of the 110 million Indonesians in the labor force.

Former manpower minister Bomer Pasaribu said he was deeply concerned about increased strike action and labor dismissals across the forestry, mining and manufacturing sectors.

"The strengthening labor movement could pose a serious threat to the country's ongoing investment promotion and will worsen the unemployment rate," Bomer said.

"Indonesia is facing an unemployment explosion. The rate has reached double digits and this is a bad indicator for our national economy. Despite the new investment legislation giving facilities and incentives to foreign investors, no foreign investors have invested in the real sector in the past three years," he said.

Bomer, also chairman of the Center for Labor and Development Studies and a Golkar Party legislator, said the government and local administrations should cooperate with the Indonesian Employers' Association to campaign the use of bipartite talks to settle disputes.

Chairwoman of the labor, health and social affairs commission at the House of Representatives, Ribka Tjiptaning, said she was reluctant to comment on labor strikes because the government appeared to be "not serious (in its efforts) to handle labor issues".

She said the increased number of strikes in the past two months were related to employers being reluctant to pay the compulsory holiday allowance before the Idul Fitri holiday. "This condition will remain before the Christmas holiday and the planned hike for the monthly minimum wage," Ribka said.

"Many employers do not pay the holiday allowance because of the absence of legal certainty. They will likely reduce their labor costs anticipating soaring world oil prices and political instability ahead of the 2009 general election," she said.