JAKARTA (Joint Press Release): The International Labour Organization (ILO) will launch a Decent Work Profile for Indonesia which assesses progress in the development of labour market conditions and protection for workers over the past decade on Wednesday, 23 May, at Le Meridien Hotel, Jakarta. The Profile will be officially launched by Julian Wilson, Head of Delegation of the European Union and Peter van Rooij, Country Director of the ILO in Indonesia.

The Profile is developed under the ILO’s Monitoring and Assessing Progress of Decent Work (MAP) Project, funded by the European Union and carried out by ILO in collaboration with the Government of Indonesia and its social partners. Working together with Government agencies, workers’ and employers’ organizations as well as research institutions, the Project aims to strengthen the capacity of developing and transition countries to self-monitor and self-assess progress towards decent work. Indonesia is one of the ten countries globally implementing the MAP project.

Through the Indonesian Decent Work Country Profile, it is hoped that relevant actors, including the Government of Indonesia, employers’ and workers’ organizations, can take stock of the progress made in Indonesia since 1996, and identify the remaining challenges and develop required policies and implementation.

The Profile covers eleven thematic areas of decent work and draws on relevant statistics and presents important aspects of the legal framework for decent work in Indonesia. The Profile includes the following key findings:

• Unemployment has fallen since its 10-year peak in 2005 but still remains high, especially among women and young people.
• Average real wages have risen but lag behind increases in minimum wages.
• Female and casual workers are generally less well-off than other workers and women’s working conditions are still worse than those for men.
• A large proportion of the workers have low pay and little job security.
• More and more people work more than 48 hours a week, compared with the Government-mandated 40-hour working week.
• Despite a commitment to eradicate child labour, more than 1.5 million children between the ages of 10 and 17 are working.
• Social dialogue, employers’ and employees’ representation have shown improvement over the past five years, although gaps in official records and controversial data on strikes prevent a full assessment.

Peter van Rooij, Country Director of the ILO in Indonesia, said that monitoring and assessing progress towards decent work at the country-level is an important task of the ILO and its constituents. “Creating jobs, guaranteeing workplace rights for all workers and developing social protection and a dialogue between workers, employers and the government is a tried and tested method of both boosting productivity and unlocking the true value of a country’s human capital,” he said.

“By developing policies that follow the Decent Work Agenda, the Government can help to ensure that all Indonesians have access to productive work at a fair income, security in their workplaces and social protection that gives them the freedom to participate in the decisions that affect their lives,” he added.

The Decent Work Agenda, developed by the ILO, is widely recognized as an important route out of poverty. It has four strategic objectives: to create jobs, to guarantee rights at work, to extend social protection and to promote social dialogue. The ILO has used the Decent Work Profile to draw up a list of policy initiatives that could be used to accelerate development of the Decent Work Agenda.

For further information please contact:

Diah Widarti
National Project Officer of the ILO’s MAP Project
Tel.: +6221 391 3112 ext. 129
Email

Gita Lingga
Media Relation Officer
Telp.: +6221 391 39112 ext. 115
Email