O

n Wednesday morning, residents of Greater Jakarta and other towns will be bracing for the strikes threatened by representatives of hundreds of thousands of workers.

Among others, the Congress Alliance of Indonesian Labor Unions (KASBI) announced on Monday that its local branches in Samarinda, East Kalimantan; Batubara, North Sumatra; Palembang and Prabumulih in South Sumatra; Semarang and Surakarta in Central Java; and Yogyakarta were planning simultaneous protests. Unions in prominent industrial districts such as Jakarta; Tangerang, Banten; and Bekasi, Cimahi, Indramayu, Karawang and Subang, West Java; will also join the strikes, KASBI said.

The message: Raise wages, end outsourcing and the contract-employment system. The strategy: Pressure the government and authorities will back off, like they did after the last effort to ditch the minimum wage regulations. The results: Public sympathy expected to decline after the last massive strikes led to the closing of toll roads. The lost message: Daily hardships at jobs demanding long hours and offering no security, owing to contracts and outsourcing arrangements extending for over 10 years.

At the end of the day, everybody stands to lose. Organized labor constitutes a fraction of the workforce, 75 percent of which is comprised by those who work for a very low income in the informal sector. Half of the nation’s workforce of about 109 million people are only elementary school graduates; many seek to work overseas. At job fairs, experienced workers compete with fresh graduates from high schools and universities.

It is this picture that is skewed by the strikes: While union leaders claim to represent millions of working people, the lion’s share of job seekers do not have the luxury to demand jobs with long-term security. Such job seekers come from families struggling to leave the lowest income brackets of one or two dollars a day — the households under the poverty line.

When a movement does not represent the majority of its purported stakeholders, it will only succeed in intimidating its targets — the authorities and employers in this case.

If union leaders really realize who they represent and who they do not, they might gain wider acceptance by fighting for labor rights under contracts and outsourcing arrangements — which are legal arrangements with lots of flaws. As most Indonesians find themselves in the informal sector or in arrangements with only short-term security, it is these conditions which must be immediately improved.

 It was small and medium businesses that survived the Asian financial crisis; businesses that could not afford to hire so many workers on a permanent basis. Thus while union leaders refer to the right to decent work in accordance with the Constitution, it is indeed the struggle for decent work that must gain wider solidarity and support, even for non-permanent arrangements.

Reform has seen a proliferation of labor unions, which is encouraging for the mobilization of workers’ interest versus often abusive employers. But their small representation among the workforce remains the main constraint to increased bargaining power.

Unions urgently need to re-orient their struggle to represent the larger part of the workforce who are not likely to have access to stable, secure jobs any time soon. More focus on the abuses in casual arrangements would generate more attention than seeking to end contracts and outsourcing. Widespread abuses include paying only the minimum wage without necessary allowances such as for transportation and food.

However, mounting pressure by blocking toll roads will only invite resentment from other workers trying to return home to their families.