Background

With the support of the Government of Indonesia and the social partners, the ILO undertook a diagnostic process on working conditions in the palm oil sector in 2015. Based on the results of the diagnostic process, discussed in a tripartite setting in August 2015, the constituents agreed on a national plan of action on the promotion of decent work on oil palm plantations.

The action plan is organized around six areas: (i) Employment status; (ii) Wages; (iii) Social dialogue; (iv) Occupational safety and health; (v) Child labour; and (vi) Labour inspection. There was a consensus that these areas required particular attention in order to strengthen Indonesia’s economic advantage in the palm oil sector in a sustainable way, and to improve working and living conditions of plantation workers and the performance of the sector.

In 2017, the ILO has embarked on a project entitled “Promoting Decent Work on Oil Palm Plantations in Indonesia”, which aims to assist the tripartite constituents in the implementation of the national action plan. One of the project outputs aims at improving working condition in targeted plantations through updating and revising OSH management systems in close collaboration with bipartite dialogue.

Within the context of this output, the project will a) foster good practices sharing between palm oil producing provinces in Indonesia, private companies, as well as smallholder plantations on OSH related issues, including by capitalizing on the existing platforms and standards that have been developed. In order to facilitate the creation of an enabling environment for the adoption of good OSH policies and practices on selected smallholder and large-scale plantations through training programmes as well as technical support to strengthen or establish bipartite committees, the project will conduct training workshops on the implementation of the OSH management systems.

The objective of the activities is to improve working conditions and in particular OSH in the palm oil sector through improved capacity of labour inspectors, agricultural extension workers, employers’ organizations and trade unions to provide services and contributed to healthy and safe environments in the palm oil sector in accordance with their respective roles and responsibilities.

It aims at the promotion of an enabling environment for OSH improvement through awareness raising and skills development, as well as through the effective access to supporting services (risk assessments, basic improvements at the plantation level, access to OSH services, social protection and compensation) with special attention to gender-specific vulnerabilities.

Deliverables

• A package of training modules on health and safety (targeting plantation workers, smallholders and employers) in the palm oil sector to be developed based on existing ILO modules on OSH and work place improvement in agriculture (such as: Work Improvement in Neighbourhood development, Better Work Assessment tools, SCORE project modules on Occupational safety and health);
• A training, to be delivered based on the adopted modules: it will target 15 trainers at the national and provincial level from the extension workers from the Ministry of Agriculture, and the labour inspectorate of the Ministry of Manpower, as well as 15 trainers from union members, Employers organisation, and OSH specialists from selected plantations.