Vol. 76/No. 38      October 22, 2012

The strike was called to protest the growth of “outsourcing”—replacing permanent workers with contract labor—and to press for an increase in the minimum wage, which in the capital Jakarta amounts to about 1,500 million rupiah per month (US$156). Other demands were put forward around health insurance and retirement incomes.

“This is just the beginning,” said Rini Kusnadi in a phone interview from Jakarta Oct. 5. Kusnadi is head of the women’s department of the National Union Confederation (KSN), one of the participating unions.

“The worst thing that is happening right now is outsourcing,” said Kusnadi. “The underlying problem is that 14 years after reformasi, workers’ lives have gotten harder.”

Reformasi is a popular term for the period after the downfall of the military-based dictatorship of Suharto, who resigned in 1998. The fight against the Suharto regime brought greater political rights for working people. Recent years have also seen a rapid rise in foreign and domestic capital investment and industrial development.

According to the Oct. 2 Jakarta Globe, Said Iqbal, chairperson of the Confederation of Indonesian Workers Union (KSPI), said among the issues of the strike is opposition to the proposal under new legislation to make “workers pay 2 percent of their wages towards health insurance.”

The Indonesian Workers Assembly (MPBI), and the Indonesian Metal Workers Federation (FSPMI), made the initial strike call, reported the Jakarta Post.

Hundreds of thousands struck at 700 workplaces in 80 industrial estates, according to police estimates. At least 5,000 factories were affected on the islands of Java, Batam, and Sumatra, Sofyan Wanandi, chairman of the Indonesian Employers Association, told the Singapore-based Straits Times.

The biggest reported actions took place on Java, home to half the country’s 240 million people. In the industrial areas of Jakarta, strikers marched from workplace to workplace, encouraging others to join.

In a number of places bosses “deployed armed security personnel to prevent workers from joining the strike,” Iqbal told the Post.

The unions in Yogyakarta “were not big enough to close the factories,” said Mahendra, a worker for the Congress of Indonesian Unions Alliance (KASBI) in the city of nearly 400,000 people in Central Java. Instead, “we gave out leaflets outside the factories,” he told the Militant in an Oct. 6 phone interview.

“The strike was very significant—the first time in 50 years there’s been a nationwide strike,” said Mahendra. “It opens up the chance for negotiation and will strengthen the fight for the workers’ demands.” Above all, he said, “it increased workers’ self-confidence.”
 
 
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