BY TONY ILTIS
MELBOURNE — "Although Indonesia has, like a good child, been obeying the [International Monetary Fund], the economy is not improving", Indonesian union leader Dr Setia Pribadi told a March 15 public meeting here on labour struggles against the IMF.
Since Indonesia signed a structural adjustment program with the IMF in 1997, following the East Asian financial crisis, the situation for the country's masses has worsened, said Pribadi, a representative of the militant and independent FNPBI union federation.
The biggest impact has come from the removal of subsidies on basic goods, he said, which has forced prices up at the same time that jobs are being lost and wages are going down.
A medical worker, Pribadi told of the effects of IMF-enforced structural adjustment on the country's health system: the removal of subsidies on medicines has made it difficult for poor families to avoid drugs, he said. Indonesia's pharmaceutical industry is dominated by foreign giants, like Bayer and Pfizer.
The only major beneficiaries of structural adjustment, he argued, were Western creditors, whose billion-dollar loans have been guaranteed by the IMF package.
The IMF and its sister institution, the World Bank, have a long history of interference in Indonesia. They first came on the scene in the late 1960s, Pribadi explained, after General Suharto's 1965 military coup opened up the country to international capital. The two institutions were major financial and diplomatic backers of the dictatorship from that point on.
Pribadi is one of a group of Indonesian unionists in Melbourne for a trade union training course being organised by Australia Asia Worker Links. The March 15 meeting at which he spoke was jointly sponsored by AAWL and ASIET, Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor.
Other members of the delegation include members of the Jabotabek Workers Union (SBJ), from the industrial belt surrounding Jakarta, its equivalent in the east Javanese city Surabaya (SBR) and the Indonesian Workers Prosperity Union (SBSI).
SBSI research director Patuan Samosir told Green Left Weekly that labour rights violations remained common in the country, despite its ratification of International Labour Organisation conventions guaranteeing freedom of association.
He cited the case of SBSI's coordinator in East Kalimantan, who was arrested for his involvement in strikes by mining and forestry workers, and that of eight SBSI organisers in Medan, Sumatra, held in prison for four months after striking textile workers had fought off company goons.
The SBSI has published a book detailing over 100 labour rights violations in 1999 and 2000, Samosir said.
Both Pribadi and Samosir said that their respective organisations were committed to building strong actions on May 1.