Developing Social Pacts Based on Labour Movements

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Background

DEMOS’ study on the important dimensions of meaningful democracy (2005 and 2007) shows how democracy in Indonesia still faces a number of problems e.g. democracy deficit, pseudo representation, the persistence of oligarchy group and the condition of floating democrats. As a consequence of this condition, the pro-democracy movement need not only to look for ways to strengthen democratic institutions and democratic actors’ position, but it must also actively and proactively expand its basis of democracy by identifying stronger and more strategic alliance. One way to achieve it is through social pact by politicising and scaling up labour movement and issues to public actions in the level of state capacities: political, and socio-economic power.

In simple terms, social pact can be interpreted as an outcome of social dialogue. Social dialogue in the national level is a dialogue concerning common issues related to social policy and economic problems among employers, workers (labour), and the government. This social pact covers various activities such as information sharing, consultation, negotiation, and concertation. In the end, this social pact is expected to generate consensus, after the parties come through and reconcile different interests to come to an agreed meeting point.

Portrayal of Labour Movement

In democratisation constellation, labour has its own urgency. It is not an exaggeration for Rueschemeyer (1992) to say that labour group is the main pro-democracy power. There are at least three major reasons to say that labours have great potential to be the agent of change compared to other civil society forces. First, labour has “better” ability to mobilise its people to conduct political movement. Unlike other civil society forces, labour movement is often stimulated by collective awareness –even class awareness— after experiencing exploitation in production relations. In many cases throughout different countries, labour has more militant and clear political identity rooted in the history. Second, labour movement –unlike student movement for example— can have broad economic impact to the enterprise as well as macroeconomics of the country by putting a halt in the production process. Third, Labour movement can trigger new socio-political problems particularly in industrial concentrated areas –it can even force a change of regime or political structure.

Though labour movement is deemed critical in democratisation constellation, the portrayal of labour movement in Indonesia is still difficult to be clearly mapped. Quantitatively labours are great in number, but qualitatively their lives are often tossed about helplessly. The condition is worsened by global business competition that created a new phenomenon of shorter working relations in the form of out-sourcing and other flexibility. This leads to shorter period of employments, less labour-intensive industries, and the emergence of “non-union zone” in several industrial areas. This condition has significantly affected the labour movement pattern. Then, how is the portrayal of the current labour movement in Indonesia?

The list of problems can go on. According to Chairman of Confederation of Indonesian Prosperous Labour Union (Ketua Umum Konfederasi Serikat Buruh Sejahtera Indonesia-KSBSI), Rekson Silaban, those labour problems are originated from 3 main weaknesses of labour union. First weakness is the low density of trade union. The rate of trade union density in Indonesia stands at only 12% of the total formal labour (43 million) or only 8% of the total labour force (102 million). As a comparison, in European countries, the rates of labour union density are generally above 40%. In Scandinavian countries, it even reaches 80%. The low trade union density in Indonesia becomes one of the causes for labour movement failure to be the leading catalyst in directing government policies.

Second weakness, lack of organisational funding capability that influences organisational independence. The small contribution from members is definitely far from sufficient. Member’s small remuneration, low number of members, and stagnant check of system makes labour union looks very poor. Many labour unions do not even have the minimum prerequisite for running activities such as office, media, wages for full time staff, administrative arrangement, training and other posts. Hence, there are many labour organizations that exist only in name label, which sometimes jeopardizing the image of labour union by acting as dispute brokerage who pose as labour mediator or labour representative but will lead to a negotiation whose result is not in favour of labours. Unions with this attitude might survive for a short period of time, but in the end labour will refuse to support their legitimacy, since in the long run, only unions who honestly represent labour’s interest will survive. Third weakness comes from mistakes made by labour unions themselves.

There has been perception that labour movements nowadays are trapped in technical problems. Almost all of their time is spent on dealing with internal activities such as union’s management distribution fee, administrative issues, advocating members at court, and ceremonial meetings. Such condition has lead to patron-client relationship between union management and its members. Members will only turn to unions when they face problem at work, after the problem solved, there is no further communication. Hence, labour movements nowadays are often referred as “movement without class ideology”. Union activists often lose sensitivity towards systematic injustice. Labour movements eventually fail to seek the root of poverty, economic disparity and fail to give alternative solutions. In the end, labour movements only work in technical areas and not ideological areas as it should. Human resources available in the union are no longer those who have ideology and militant, but rather those who are prone to corrupt conduct for the sake of power, money or positions for social mobility.

The weaknesses of labour union are also closely tied to the low support from the government. Government is lacking the capability to act as mediator between employee and employer. One of the indicators is the fact that many labour disputes remains unsolved, leave alone elegantly, despite government’s long effort to promote tripartite forum.

Tripartite: Discourse and Practice

Martinussen provided two major types of perspective on state’s role in economy and society, i.e.: (i) state as arena for interaction and conflict between various social force; (ii) state as sole independent actor who determine or at least capable of affecting society and market. (Martinussen, 1999).

In above context, tripartite model assumes state as mediator as mediator and parties who actively design productive dialogue together with employer and their labour. The question is whether this tripartite model is an effective solution for today’s labour problem.

According to Consortium of Migrant Labour Advocates (Konsorsium Pembela Buruh Migran Indonesia-KOPBUMI), Felikson Silitonga, tripartite as a concept has been moderately ideal, as long as the union possess good and sufficient bargaining position. Nonetheless, existing unions are still not independent and have not been capable to support the sustainability of its organisation. Such dependency has made employers and government to consider unions simply as underdogs. In such condition tripartite model become ineffective. This is because, as an illustration, unions can be dictated and they often place their representatives in the unions as formality, thus making unions’ involvement in the tripartite forum as legitimacy tools only. Thus, he believes that it is crucial for unions to maintain their independence, and not dependent to government. We can use labour union in German as a good illustration, they have strong bargaining positions because they can maintain their independence, and whatever the government does or does not do, do not worried them.

The other pre-requisite for the tripartite forum is clear commitment from the government and employers. According to activist of Transportation Labour Union of Struggle (Serikat Buruh Transportasi Perjuangan Indonesia-SBTPI), Dedi Fauzi, the government does not have clear orientation in promoting the tripartite forum. “Government is actively involved only when problem solving is in progress, which is after we force them to be involved” He said. Dedi also criticise employer’s role in promoting open and transparent dialogue. “Employer is not fully committed, they are only willing to conduct dialogue when it favours their own agenda, Dedi added.

Therefore, according to Dita Indah Sari, it is hard to apply tripartite model even in the formal level, because in the very beginning of the formulation, labour has been placed in a weak positions because of alliance between government and employer that tends to occur. “Hence, I believe it’s quite impossible for us to rely on tripartite forum to solve labour problems. It is better and more realistic for labour to build their capacity in politics to gain bargaining positions when negotiating with employers and government” she noted. It is necessary for labour to expand their allies, to avoid too much dependence to tripartite forum because it is not the proper solution for labour problems.

In line with that, Lilis Mahmudah also gave the same point on the ineffectiveness of existing tripartite forum. It is because of that very reason that National Labour Union (Serikat Pekerja Nasional-SPN) withdrew its involvement in National Tripartite Forum (tripartitnas), although she said that the withdrawal is not for permanent term. She adds that it is still possible to conduct negotiation with government and employer in the national tripartite forum, as long as some prerequisites are fulfilled. “The problem is that we haven’t seen those prerequisites fulfilled therefore we chose to withdraw from the forum, but it does not refrain us from having discussions with the government. We also hope that there will be a chance where we can sit together and discuss about labour movements together, openly and transparently.” She added.

Lilis also added that ideally all parties should respect each other and refraining themselves from using others as mere tools for one’s agenda. What happens now is that labour union is often used as mere tools for legitimating power of ruler or employer or both. As long as the relationship is not in the equal terms, the tripartite forum will not be healthy. Therefore, it is necessary to build a healthy relationship, i.e. an equal relationship between 3 parties. Labour possesses equal right for speech, right to express their opinion and right to be involved in the policy making. It is hence clear that labour should have equal positions, and not only serve as legitimating tools. “When these prerequisites exist, we have to be open, no one should stay outside the system, we have to get in to the system to pursue an ideal tripartite forum,” Lilis added.

Social Pact Prospect

Demos’ national research in 2005 and 2007 concluded that democracy in Indonesia was challenged by serious problem, particularly on the matter of people representation. Labour also faced similar problem. The representation of labour union’s members only reached 12% of the total number of formal labours ( about 43 million) or only 8% of the total number of work force (about 102 million). As comparison, in European countries the representation of labour union’s members reached 40% or above in average. In Scandinavian countries, the number even increases into 80%. The poor level of representation of labour union’s members is one of the reasons why labour movements failed to be an important catalyst to influence government’s policies.

The lack of government’s support and appreciation is one of the reasons why labour union is weak. The government, who should acts as mediator between labour and employer has not performed his function well. Numbers of elegantly unsettled labour conflict become the proof, although the government itself has since long ago promoted tripartite forum.

The high level of mutual distrust between labour and employers is likely to be the cause of the failure of industrial relationship in Indonesia. Labours perceive employers as liars who always declare their loss, while employers assume that labours always complain without understanding their problems.In addition, labour law in Indonesia does not oblige labours and employers to negotiate on problems existed between them. Law on Labour only directs mechanism of negotiation in case both parties are willing to negotiate, but not to oblige them to sit and discuss the problem on negotiation forum.

Such condition is not only disadvantage labours but also other components; i.e employers and government. Thus, it is necessary to establish productive dialogue between the three parties, which, thus, will bore mutual trust as well as new-social pact that oriented to the creation of beneficial social security and welfare system.

Olle Tornquist (2006) stated that social pact can be simply defined as a result of national level dialogue on public issues related to social-economic policy among employers, workers (labours) and government. Practically, social pact takes form in various activities such as negotiation and joint decision making.Social-pact is expected to produce consensus, after the involved parties settle their different interests in order to reach certain agreement.

Referring to some countries’ experiences, especially those of Scandinavia, all models of social pact are basically lain their foundation on joint economical interest of the most important and strategic aspects of capital or employers, labour organisation as well as broader national economy interest. Thus, social-pact model does not put employers’ interest and labours’ interest vis a vis, but attempts to find a consensus that is characterised by win-win solution, so that good economic system is created in a broader social security system.

One of Demos’ thematic researches (2006) on social pact suggests labours’ pessimistic view on efforts to create social-pact in Indonesia. Perhaps,should be recognized very difficult to think about a model of social pact in Indonesia, but it was not impossible to do, if some requirements and pre-conditions exist to make sense the alternative. Among the requirements and pre-conditions are solid labour movement, labours’ and employers’ willingness and ‘maturity’ to negotiate, and government’s goodwill and political will to settle matters on manpower and prosperity. Then, are all parties involved able to prepare all the requirements to settle labour and industrial relation problems elegantly?

@sofianasgart

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