Eleven months after leaving Pasar Kemis, Tangerang, Rudi Aritonang and his three family members now earn a living on a 1.5-hectare farm they purchased upon their arrival in their home village in Gambus, Asahan, North Sumatra, in January. His 28-year-old wife, Rentina, continued her business as a traveling garment vendor to financially support the family and allow their two children to go to school.
Rudi, who graduated from a senior vocational technology school in 2003, was dismissed after working almost six years at a shoe factory in Pasar Kemis. He was one of the thousand workers laid off by the labor-intensive manufacturing industries worst hit by the 2008 global economic downturn.
Like Rudi, 34-year-old Siti Aminah, a former migrant worker in Citeureup, Bogor, is running a home toy industry to help his husband, who works as an office maid at an adjacent tire factory, supporting their small family. Joining in the local ex-migrant workers association, she thought to supply toy products to street vendors and shopping malls in the regency with an average monthly income of Rp 2 million in the past six months. “Life must go on Sir. My fellow ex-migrant workers and I work independently. I am running the small-scale business with the initial capital of Rp 20 million from my two-year employment as a housemaid in Hong Kong,” she told The Jakarta Post.
Both are only a part of success stories of former paid workers who lost their jobs in the wake of the global financial crisis.
The crisis hitting the export-oriented sectors has its negative impact on declining the pace of economic growth and job loss in Indonesia. Despite the economic growth of 6.1 percent in 2008, wage employment grew only by 1.4 percent in the first two quarters of this year and 1.1 percent in the tradable sector and four percent in non-tradable sectors.
The government claimed more than 51,000 in job reduction, but the Indonesian Employers’ Association (Apindo) provided data that around 300,000 subcontracted, casual and temporary workers were laid off and dismissed between October 2008 and March 2009. Data at the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry shows that some 1 million migrant workers were laid off and repatriated during the same period.
The open unemployment figure that reached 9.5 million in 2008, should grow with the negative impact of the crisis. But according to the labor survey conducted by the Central Statistical Agency (BPS), it decreased to 8.1 percent in June 2009, despite the legislative and presidential elections.
The nation experienced a blessing in disguise in its employment this year, because despite the economic growth of 4 to 5 percent, workers made redundant and the new work force have involuntarily entered the informal sector accounting for almost 70 percent of the total work force. In its response to the crisis, the government disbursed US$7.3 billion into a stimulus package to gear up the aggregate demand.
With its labor intensive infrastructure projects and many other poverty alleviation programs, the government generated more than 1.7 million jobs and provided soft-loan credits for small-scale enterprises. It also continues the social safety net programs in the forms of the healthcare insurance scheme (Jamkesnas), cheap rice and school fee assistance (BOS) for the poor. The legislative and presidential elections that cost the government, political parties and legislative candidates an estimated Rp150 trillion also enlivened small-scale enterprises, low-income people and the unemployed through the consumption economy.
In the past five years, only investments in natural resources, plantations and the service industry continued growing, survived the economic crisis and maintained their labor.
The existing major problem is that thousands of former paid workers and new job seekers accounting totally for 70 percent of the workforce have low-quality jobs, are underpaid and left unprotected. The regional minimum wages and the social security programs (Jamsostek) have been effective only for paid workers numbering only around 30 million and only 8 million of them are covered by state-run Jamsostek.
Apindo chairman Sofjan Wanandi recently warned of an increase in the poverty rate, low-quality jobs and crimes amid the booming informal sector that could disrupt the political instability, saying, besides allocating more funds in the stimulus package in the 2010 state budget, the government had to forge coordination with regional administrations to generate more job opportunities, improve the low quality of human resources and protect informal workers in accelerating development in the informal sector and responding to the deindustrialization trend.
To him, the government, employers and labor unions have to go to a roundtable negotiation to settle the unresolved industrial issues on outsourcing practice, contract works and high-severance payment haunting employers and workers, and hindering investment since 2005. Employers have provided signals of their agreement to revise the wage system and the outsourcing practice, but they also want labor unions to revise the high-severance payments.
The government has also yet to show its political commitment to implementing a 2004 national social security system law, which regulates, among others, that the government provide social security for the unemployed and a healthcare scheme for people living in poverty. This is urgently needed to provide financial support for the unemployed and protect almost 2 million workers in the informal sector.
The way President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has dealt with corruption, judiciary mafias and the Rp 6.76 trillion Bank Century bailout scandal has raised skepticism among investors on legal certainty and could hinder foreign investors to invest in the country. The President’s 100-day program designed in the National Summit held only days after he assumed his second presidential term,
has been left soundless due to the corruption issue that wasted energy and time in the past two months.
The appointment of politician Muhaimin Iskandar as manpower and transmigration minister has also raised skepticism among labor unions and employers despite his promise to revise the harsh 2003 labor law and the 1992 law on social security programs, and to boost the informal sector.
Labor unions have declined to pay attention to the unemployment problem, which they said must be solved by the government. They warned that the gloomy economic and labor condition was a ticking bomb for the government, which they said, could explode as a “a social revolt” some time in the future.
“SBY actually has no political commitment to repair the labor condition as shown by the absence of willingness to solve the crucial labor issues and implement the national social security system. It is the task of the government, not employers or labor unions, to create job opportunities and pro-labor policies. And Muhaimin is not a suitable person in the manpower portfolio,” chairman of the Confederation of Indonesian Workers Union (KSPI) Thamrin Mossie said recently.
However, labor unions have been in a difficult position Reaching more than 100 but representing only 14 percent of 30 million workers in the formal sector unions, could no longer directly be involved in the decentralized minimum wage fixing process. The mushrooming labor unions have yet to see the importance of forming a merger into a national confederation to allow them to form a political party.
Not do they have affiliate parties to have the government revise the unfriendly labor policy. Two labor parties contended in the April 9 legislative election, but none won threshold seats in parliament.
In his 100-day program, minister Muhaimin has given top priority to a continued promotion and development of the informal sector and intensified the resettlement program to help cope with the unemployment problem and reduce the poverty rate.
With the targeted economic growth of 7 percent in 2010 and the higher stimulus package, he said, the government was expected to generate around 3 million job opportunities to reduce the unemployment rate to 5 percent from the current 8.1 percent and simultaneously reduce the poverty to10 percent from the current 14 percent.
He was also repairing the recruitment and training process to improve the competence of migrant workers, their bargaining power at their work place abroad and their protection during their employment and trips to and from their home villages.
The author is a staff writer at The Jakarta Post.
| 
|
|
|
|
|
|
|