Workshop

Joint Trade Union Platform of Indonesian Workers Organizations for Actions on Decent Work Priorities

This two day workshop is aimed at reviewing key issues facing workers organizations in industrial relations, priorities for decent work and set up a joint platform(s) for increased organizational & technical capacity for promoting organizing and effective social dialogue, and/or collective bargaining for addressing the identified priorities.

Objectives

The workshop will contribute towards:
  • Strengthening organizational capacities of the Indonesian workers organizations to better represent workers interests in tripartite and bi-partite fora in matters of decent work priorities; and
  • Development of trade unions’ follow up plan to implement identified priorities on decent work, organizing and collective bargaining through the joint platform(s)/joint working group.

Background

This two day workshop is aimed at reviewing key issues facing workers organizations in industrial relations, priorities for decent work and set up a joint platform(s) for increased organizational & technical capacity for promoting organizing and effective social dialogue, and/or collective bargaining for addressing the identified priorities. The meeting will discuss and propose follow up work plan - identifying priority areas of joint work, activities needed and key capacity building support needed for joint trade union platform(s) for the implementation of the work plan.

Indonesian economy has been growing but this growth has not been accompanied by growth in decent work as much as it should have for the majority of the wage earners. Workers Organizations report that wage employment has been growing but at least one third of the workers are in low pay. Almost half of the women in employment are categorized as low paid. Economic growth has been accompanied by growth of informal-unorganized sectors, precarious work for youth and women and rising social and income inequalities.

On industrial relations front, a number of issues face workers and their organizations such as – lack of compliance with minimum wages, inadequacies of tripartite social dialogue mechanisms, labour inspection and dispute resolution systems, outsourcing of labour and difficulties in exercise of FoA and collective bargaining rights. No reliable estimates exist on union memberships but union density is said to be around 8%. Similarly, the scope and the coverage of collective bargaining remains low (about 5% of the registered companies in 2013 had collective bargaining agreements – most of these restricted to benefits under the law; this lack of scope for bargaining also partly explains why there is so much emphasis by unions on minimum wage fixing structures and minimum wage negotiations that new policy seems to have removed from negotiations ambit in 2016.

Improved respect for FoA, improvements in social dialogue and collective bargaining rights will go a long way in addressing many of the challenges in industrial relations and the decent work deficits. As noted by ILO DCM, it would help the overall labour relations climate in the country if the it moved away from a heavily security based approach on IR matters towards the development of more harmonious social dialogue and collective bargaining processes, coupled with effective dispute resolution mechanisms.

The emerging economic environment and the challenges in the labour markets requires unions to develop not only new skills & strategies for organizing and representing workers interests but also requires working together on common issues in defence of workers’ rights and interests in bipartite and tripartite fora. This workshop is part of the ILO-ACTRAV efforts for promoting joint actions by workers organizations in Indonesia for increased organizational strength for social dialogue, collective bargaining and organizing actions for addressing the identified priorities (ex. monitoring and promoting compliance with minimum wages).

The workshop will not only review & identify key issues for decent work, organizing and collective bargaining but also provide an opportunity for the participants to discuss challenges for joint working, identifying priority areas of joint work, activities needed and propose a follow up work plan for the implementation of the identified priorities – to be implemented through Joint Platform(s) of trade unions in Indonesia.