Indonesia: fighting for free unions
HERI, a local organiser for the Indonesian Centre for Labour Struggles (PPBI) and LUKMAN HAKIM, a PPBI national coordinator, have both been arrested for participating in strike actions. They are interviewed below by ASIET (Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor) activist VANESSA TANAJA, who recently returned from a visit to Indonesia.
Question: How did you first get involved with PPBI?
Lukman: In April 1994, there was a strike at my factory, a ceramics factory in Semarang. At first I did not understand what a strike was; then, on the second day, I had discussions with some friends and it turned out to be an action to demand our rights as workers. I became one of the leaders of this strike.
During this time, our student comrades noticed me at this action and they recruited me. They, Students in Solidarity with Democracy in Indonesia (SMID) comrades from Semarang, then educated me in politics and workers' issues. I returned to organise my factory to strike again. This strike was repressed by the security apparatus using tear gas and the like.
Question: You didn't get sacked as a result of this?
Lukman: No, because the support of the workers was particularly strong. I organised a strike at another factory. The military found out and began to look for me. It became difficult for me to keep working there, so I eventually left.
At the time, PPBI had not yet been formed [it was formed on October 23, 1994, at a congress in Ambarawa, Central Java, attended by 100 worker delegates from around Java]. Its platform consisted of three main demands: the implementation of the minimum national wage, the freedom to organise and no military intervention in labour issues. Military involvement has continued to silence workers. Under the New Order regime, Indonesian workers are given only one body to represent them, the government union, SPSI (All Indonesia Workers' Union), as a way to keep them passive.
One of the biggest strikes took place on December 11, 1995, by 12,000 workers in the Sritex textile factory in Sukoharjo, Solo. The strike was called in the name of PRD [Peoples Democratic Union], the umbrella organisation of which PPBI is a member, together with SMID. Sritex is a factory owned by Harmoko, Indonesia's information minister; Kopassus, the elite corps of the armed forces; and Tutut, President Suharto's daughter. Sritex has a monopoly on all government contracts for school and work uniforms for civil servants. It is the biggest textile mill in south-east Asia.
On the morning of the strike, 3000 workers lined the road outside the factory and others coming on for the next shift joined them. An activist from PPBI Surabaya began the rally. He had hardly begun to speak before he was arrested. This was a signal for the brutal beatings and 40 arrests which were to follow. Fifteen more activists arriving into the village were arrested for not carrying identity cards during National Discipline Month, but these identity checks were stepped up in the week leading up to the strike, in the hope of catching student activists coming to the rally and strike.
Question: What has been the response of workers towards PPBI so far?
Lukman: Up to now, the ones we have organised have responded positively to us, and they want to be PPBI members, such as in Tangerang, Bogor and Surabaya. We have been explaining to our worker activists that sackings do not mean that they have to stop fighting. It is the capitalists' way of undermining the workers' struggle. With this understanding, their awareness and enthusiasm increase.
Question: What has been the government's response to PPBI?
Lukman: Not good at all. They see us as a new force. They put out all sorts of propaganda about us. It's very rare to organise strikes and to declare them in our own name, like we have done. Also, for SMID to reveal the addresses of their branch headquarters. They brand us as the new communists.
Question: What does Sritex represent to PPBI? Why is this action in the name of the PRD?
Heri: PPBI sees that up to now, workers' struggles are not only those to do with economic issues, those around wages and welfare. These economic demands cannot be reached without workers getting involved in political struggles.
Up to now, strikes at the enterprise level have succeeded; for example, wages are sometimes raised, because the factory owner realises the strike is causing him to lose money. Yet the prices of commodities then rise. Workers have no control over the politics of wage determination at the national level and the national economy as a whole.
Indonesia is an industrial nation. Outside petroleum exports, two-thirds of its export income is derived from manufacturing. Yet workers who contribute to that export income have no organisation to represent them in national political and economic decision-making, whilst the capitalists have their business organisations, like the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce. The productivity of Indonesian workers has risen, according to research, but their real wage has fallen.
Hence, we show the workers that they have to get involved in politics, through an organisation that truly fights for their interests and that has been tested through mass action. This is composed of activists who are ready to be beaten, jailed for the sake of workers, although some activists may have come from a middle-class or a more educated background.
PPBI began by alliances between student activists in SMID and workers in action together. Now, there are increasing numbers of worker activists running PPBI, and we are striving to have more of them. As the position of workers is strengthened in politics, this will influence the political agenda of the middle class also.