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View all search resultsBYD protest exposes challenge in shifting industrial workforce
As factories embrace automation and high-tech manufacturing, workers are at risk of being left behind unless the government adapts vocational training to changing labor demands.
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A vehicle is under construction at BYD’s first new energy vehicle manufacturing facility in the Subang Smartpolitan Industrial Estate, West Java, in September 2026. (BYD/-)
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protest over hiring at a factory belonging to Chinese electric vehicle maker BYD in West Java has exposed a challenge for the country’s industrialization drive: how to ensure manufacturing investment creates jobs for local communities despite increasing automation.
Hundreds of residents from surrounding villages gathered on Oct. 28 around the factory in the Smartpolitan Industrial Estate in Subang regency to demand greater access to jobs, accusing the company of failing to employ enough local workers.
Read also: EV push gains traction as factories expand
The United Subang Community Forum (FMSB) organizing the protest estimated that residents of Subang accounted for fewer than 20 percent of the factory’s employees.
They demanded transparent recruitment, more vocational training and a 70 percent local hiring quota for companies investing in the regency.
“We are not here to obstruct investment but to communicate and find solutions so that local workers can be employed,” protest spokesman Megi Akbar Setiawan said during the demonstration, as quoted by Kompas.com.
For residents, jobs at large industrial facilities offered a route to better living standards, particularly for high school and vocational school graduates who cannot afford to pursue a university education, he said.
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