Indonesian unions cooperate to fight precarious work

INDONESIA: Three Indonesian unions, together with the FES office in the country got together on September 19 in Jakarta to share union strategies to combat the fast growing atypical forms of employment in the manufacturing sector. The unions were FSP-KEP (Indonesian Chemical, Energy and Mine Workers Federation), FSPMI (Indonesia Metalworkers Federation) and SPN (Indonesian Textile Workers Federation). Also participating in the event were the FES officer in Indonesia and ICEM project coordinators. The joint IMF-ITGLWF-ICEM Conference was organized in the framework of the ICEM Global CAL Project.

The Indonesian national trade union centre KSBSI says that outsourcing and the contract system has sharply reduced the number of permanent workers in the country, from 67% of the total formal labour workforce in 2005 to only 35% in 2011, also citing reports from the World Bank and the ILO.

The main strategies discussed at the conference were organizing contract and agency workers into trade unions and ensuring CBA coverage, law advocacy and labour inspection, and national campaigns against precarious work.

FSPMI has set an example by recruiting contract workers who are directly employed by the principal companies into plant level unions and initiating collective bargaining for the workers. FSP-KEP has unionized agency workers in the mining sector.

Social security protection for contract workers has been a major campaign in Indonesia. The campaign was launched by a coalition of trade unions and NGOs under the leadership of FSPMI.  

The Indonesian union movement has also established the Komite Aksi Melawan Outsourcing (Action Committee to fight Outsourcing). There are plans to hold workshops to enhance understanding on issues related to outsourcing, and media campaigns.

A concrete demand is that the labour law No. 13/2003 is revised, to improve regulation on the use of contract and agency labour.