Shangri-La Jakarta dispute over

As part of the settlement at the end of the dispute between the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF) and the Shangri-La Group agreed the following statement: “The Shangri-La Group and the IUF have reached a satisfactory agreement to end the conflict in Jakarta between the IUF’s local affiliate and the Shangri-La Hotel, Jakarta. Pursuant to the said agreement, all outstanding issues have been resolved and the Shangri-La Group and the IUF jointly announce that the conflict at the Shangri-La Hotel, Jakarta is at an end.”

The dispute began in December 2000. The hallmarks of the disagreement have been intimidation and strong-arm tactics from management, who influenced police to arrest strike organisers, imposed a three-month lockout, used thugs to terrorise workers, employed scab labour, defied rulings from the ILO, and claiming and winning enormous damages against workers and activists through Jakarta’s courts.

Controversy persists over legal changes

Thousands of workers hit the streets in late March after a controversial law was finally adopted on 25 March.
Plans to change Indonesia’s labour laws have been causing alarm among workers for years, and have not been implemented largely due to strong labour opposition.

Labour observers criticise the law, saying child labour will be tolerated. They also attack the new law saying it would allow employers to avoid payments to resigning workers or those sacked for illegal action, and it made no provision for menstruation leave or other reproductive rights.

According to Surya Tjandra of the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute, the new law removes the P4 labour disputes machinery from central and regional settlement committees to an industrial court, allowing employers to fire workers without prior official permission. She points out that because of corruption in the judiciary, the industrial court will favour employers.

The law specifically addresses ‘outsourcing’, making it much easier, which in turn will increase the numbers of informal workers who “become mere commodities in transactions between the first company and the firm recruiting outsourced workers”, and who will be left with no security of employment or labour insurance.

In a message to 2,000 workers Dita Indah Sari, a labour activist from the National Front for the Struggle of Indonesian Workers (FNPBI) who became famous for rejecting Reebok’s human rights award in 2002, said that workers should not comply with the law.

“ Those accepting the law are those who bow to the regime! Those accepting the law are those who bow to international capitalists!” she told applauding workers.

Union demands respect for workers

The company PT Mitra Guna Sahabat Utama has for three years now produced clothing for US giant Wal-Mart.
Until now the Garment Workers’ Union had not felt brave enough to issue protest letters over working conditions to Wal-Mart, because of fears that this would result in Wal-Mart withdrawing its orders from the factory, which would have an enormous negative impact on the firm’s 300 workers and their families.

Indonesia’s garment and textile industry is in general suffering a crisis, with consequent ill effects on labour.
But the union was prompted to action by the company’s announcement of closure.

The union did not involve the Government’s Department of Manpower and Transmigration because previous experience in a similar case was simply used as an opportunity for the Department to enter into collusion with the management. In that case also involving union members, the factory was closed down so that the company could deny all responsibilities towards employees with the full agreement of the Department. Legal action is currently ongoing against this illegal factory closure.