Street-level Politics: Labour Protests in Post-authoritarian Indonesia

Abstract

Over the past ten years, Indonesia has seen an interesting trend in political action on the part of labour. Once risky activity, street protests have been decriminalised and become a common sight in many parts of the country, especially in urban areas. Industrial workers take to the streets in large numbers to challenge the state and business interests perceived as hostile to their material and political interests. Interestingly, scholars have largely neglected this phenomenon and instead focused on labour's failure to develop as a meaningful political force. This paper assesses the significance of labour protests and the light they throw on the development of a certain mode of engagement with the post-authoritarian state. It is suggested that the proliferation of protests among workers may sow the seeds of a “movement society.”

Key Words:

• Labour politics
• post-authoritarianism
• Indonesia
• street protests
• movement society

Notes

¹ Data provided by the North Sumatra Chapter of the PBSD in Medan.

² According to Della Porta and Diani (2006: 20), social movements are a distinct social process which consists of “conflictual relations with clearly identified opponents,” “dense informal networks” and a “distinct collective identity.”

³ Of course, some old repressive habits did not simply go away after the enactment of the legislation. The law has even been used to detain protesters, such as the students who staged a demonstration outside President Megawati's official residence in 2002. See Tempointeraktif (27 January 2003).

⁴ The source used by the author was Medan Police records.

⁵ A more extreme strategy of disrupting the traffic is to march against the flow of traffic as was done by workers of PT Shamrock in Medan on 5 October 2004 outside the Medan police headquarters, as reported in the chronology written by the KPS (2004) and in Sumatera (6 October 2004).

⁶ In Ungaran, Central Java, a strike outside PT Ungaran Sari Garment that had lasted for three days angered public van drivers and almost saw an open clash between them and the strike workers (see Wawasan, 3 January 2000).

⁷ SPSI sets the union due at 1% of the minimum wage while SPN at 0.5%. For SBSI, member income accounted for just 2.3% of its total income between May 2000 and February 2003 (Caraway, 2006).

⁸ For example, in July 2009, the newly elected governor of Central Java built a gateway (gapura) that marks the entrance into the compound of the provincial administration in Balinese style with an estimated cost of Rp1.2 billion (Suara Merdeka, 22 July 2009).

⁹ The verb mengawal (to escort or to guard) is often used by trade union officials when describing the process of demanding fair wages, especially when they do not sit in the tripartite wage council.

¹⁰ This decree had earlier been replaced by the more business-friendly Ministerial Decree No. 78/2001. However, after persistent and widespread protests, including those in Bandung on 13 June 2001 which turned violent, the pro-business decree was shelved and the pro-labour one reinstated (Kompas, 22 June 2001).

¹¹ In January 2006, the government began to amend several pro-labour articles in the Manpower Law of 2003, and this again was met with fierce resistance by labour groups.

¹² Such was the experience of Kasminah, an activist of KBC in Tangerang. She was summoned by the local police to brief them on her organisation's plan to march on May Day in 2008 (interview, 28 June 2008).

¹³ A success team is an ad hoc committee responsible for mobilising support for a particular candidate in an election. It usually combines professional advisers, such as academics and party strategists, with figure heads poached from influential business, youth, ethnic or religious organisations.

¹⁴ This point was emphasized by Djimanto, the general secretary of the APINDO in Jakarta, in an interview, 4 August 2006.