T

he Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH Jakarta) has highlighted weak labor protection in the country as it revealed that labor disputes were the cases most frequently submitted to the organization in 2014.

Based on LBH Jakarta'€™s year-end report that was made available to The Jakarta Post, 209 of the 1,055 cases received by the organization in 2014 that occurred in greater Jakarta were related to labor disputes, most filed by marginalized citizens.

LBH Jakarta also reported that the legal aid organization had received 228 labor cases submitted by 54,883 people throughout the country in 2014.

Pratiwi Febry, LBH Jakarta public defender and research head, said Tuesday that it was not the first time that industrial relations disputes were the most widely handled cases by the LBH.

'€œSince the establishment of this organization, almost every year labor cases sit at the top of the chart and there is still no difference this year,'€ Pratiwi told the Post at the LBH Jakarta office in Menteng, Central Jakarta.

She said most of the workers needed legal assistance when they became involved in an industrial relations dispute with their employers because they would have very little chance of winning a legal battle if the case went to court.

Pratiwi said that when the disputes escalated to trial, the companies, which possessed all the supporting data, would most likely not share it with their workers.

'€œNot to mention all the expenses workers would face during a trial, while companies can hire expensive lawyers.'€

'€œIt is not a fair battle, that is why many of them decide to come to us,'€ she said.

LBH data indicates that in 2014 it handled 3,054 clients in 33 labor disputes at the Industrial Relations Court, while the rest were still in the advisory phase.

Dadang Tri Sasongko, secretary-general of Transparency International Indonesia (TII), said that workers were also prone to becoming victims of the country'€™s corrupt justice system.

He added that based on research released by the TII, the corruption index for the judicial system was still very low and it did not have the ability to protect the human rights of marginalized people.

'€œIn many labor cases, the workers became victims in two places, their workplace and the court,'€ Dadang said.

Pratiwi said further there were still cultural misconceptions in the city that pictured workers as unskilled people always complaining about their conditions.

'€œFor example, there are a lot of protests from the public when workers stage rallies in the city, while in fact many of them have not been paid by their employers,'€ she said.

The year-end report also showed that LBH handled 12 eviction cases that were submitted by 825 people in 2014.

Pratiwi emphasized that evictions were highly prone to human rights violations because most of the squatters had no prior notification nor suitable compensation from the city administration.

'€œSometimes evictions are inevitable, but we want to make sure that the administration does not violate people'€™s rights in the process,'€ she said.