With the workers Some revolutionary currents resisted the opportunity to enter the legal arena after the collapse of the Suharto regime. The "Labour Working Group" preferred to organise themselves as "organic intellectual support" for worker-led labour organising groups like the clandestine KBB (Bandung Workers Organisation).
According to Elaine of the LWG, "we need to build unions now, so that, when the crisis is over, workers can start to claw back their lost wages, and make some new demands. Student lettists say 'Workers, form an independent union! But they don't teach them how to build. Or how to collect funds. Or how to make a financial report to the members!"
The group often targets factory bus stops. "The driver is the only company representative present, so, if we can win him over, we have no problem," says LWG member Argo. "The workers willingly pay Rp.100 (1.5e US) for our
The group rejects most outside
"because we recognise the relationship of dependence which it creates. But we make an exception for a couple of research projects, which enable us to get primary data for our own benefit, and help finance our other
The LWG is determined not to hegemonise the process of labour 14 International Viewpoint #314 September 1999 organising and growth in consciousness. As they grow, they are trying to build new collectives for labour and women's organising, to take pressure and power) away from the core group. Wage questions
West Java has the highest minimum wage in Indonesia, reflecting the concentration of industry, and the class struggle, in western Java. But in practice this 230,000 Rp/month has become the maximum wage for industrial workers. Many earn about half of this.
"When workers earn only 3000/day, it is easy to organise them into a union, because they have a clear legal right to 7600/day," says Arnold. "But as soon as they win the minimum wage, they are demobilised. Their struggle doesn't create a strong union. So, we use this kind of struggle to build a contact, and to start discussing with a group of workers.
"But if they don't want to go beyond the minimum wage demand, then we orient them towards NGOs that specialise in legal aid. Our 'above-ground' supporters then help them in that way That enables us to focus our organisers in those workplaces where consciousness is a little higher."
The minimum wage in Sumatra and Sulawesi is closer to Rp. 160,000. "But a kilo of rice costs Rp.3,000 anywhere in
The LWG traces its origins to the same Marxist-Leninist student circles that produced the PRD (from which they were expelled in the early '90s. They do not share their former comrades' enthusiasm for propagandistic wage demands. "It's not just the question of tea. It is even harder for them to imagine that each family could have its own house. At the moment, four or five workers from different shifts share one small room, with two beds. But we get
"Then we research the price of the goods, to put a price on their dream, to define the wage the workers need to get the life they want. We present this in campaigns, leaflets and posters. The important thing, of course, is that this commission is dominated by the workers themselves." Independent federation
Painstaking training in organisation building and how to hold democratic elections seems to be bearing fruit. Workers from 50 independent unions in eight provinces came to Bandung in August 1998 to explore the possibilities of closer collaboration between the independent trade unions.
According to KBB leader Arnold, "many trade unions exist formally, bur have no real membership base. We wan real trade unions, self-financed, and no dependent on government, employers, or outside finances.
"We also want to build from the bottom up. Labour groups like SBS were established as a federation, a "declare" a new union every time recruit someone from a new factory. are trying to build real unions, and federate them. In the old days, when we helped workers create a workplace union, we said they sho decide for themselves about affili Some joined SBSI, others even affil to the state-controlled SPSI.
"But now, many of our plant want to form their own federation say this would give them more w negotiations, and protect them police and employer repression."
Many delegates at the Band
conference asked the KBB to organise this new union federation. "Workers know the KBB, and want us to form and lead this federation," says Arnold. "But we refuse. we aren't a union. We are an organisation of labour organisers. We tell them erase KBB from your thinking, and build the federation yourselves. It shouldn't depend on us.
KBB is strongest in the textile and garment sectors. Since worker-organisers have difficulty making connections to other sectors, LWG militants, who have the education, time and resources, have launched an organising campaign in telecom, education, the state-owned textile companies, hotel, restaurant and
HI FUNOSI
VAN RA catering, and banking. "We will build something like KBB in those sectors, then link it to the KBB," explains Argo.
Youth and the Women
Most professions are still sexsegregated, Argo explains. Over 70% of textile workers are women, and the men tend to have better-paid jobs as mechanics or supervisors. Most employers pay men a supplementary meal allowance, "to cover their greater appetites." To make matters worse, the Indonesian tax system favours married men, but continues to tax married women as if they were single, without dependents. "This is why we need to motivate women to participate in the union, and motivate other women to attend. We need women to take over more of the important positions in the movement." Manipulating the workers
LWG members are frustrated with the way the larger student-led left groups relate to working people. Students have long recognised workers as a key base of support for the student-led reform movement. But the way they have incorporated workers has occasionally damaged workers own interests.
According to one angry organiser, "student radicals typically encourage workers in dispute to focus their demands on government, even to travel to Jakarta. Workers are pressed into a string of demonstrations-including the (irrelevant) ILO office, or the US embassy.
"At such demonstrations, workers' demands are invariably marginalised as a succession of student speakers make epic speeches about reformasi.
"Even worse, by bringing workers to Jakarta to demonstrate, student organisers effectively allow the boss to occupy the factory, and recruit new workers. In some such cases, angry workers have burned down the factory.
"Some students see this as proof of a growing anti-capitalist consciousness. But in reality, many such workers are also extremely bitter towards the provocateurs who they blame for their unemployment." [MJ] * revolution
Indonesia's greatest novelist Pramoedya Ananta Toer' gave this speech when he joined the Peoples Democratic Party (PRD) earlier this year. "Long live democracy!
At this moment, in the midst of this Generation, I truly feel happy. This is the most important event in my life, what I have dreamed of since I was young: to witness for myself the birth of a Young Generation not burdened by bombasticism, and which is rational, corrective, critical, and all of this bound by firmness of commitment.
There are PRD members lost in who knows what jungle, those kidnapped, and those whose jungle we know, those in gaol. They are all victims of the staged trials that are the fashion today. Now I am in the midst of the PRD, among whom are some who escaped from kidnapping. In fact I was one of the first victims of kidnapping, in 1959.3 Although back then, it was not news.
I assess the Young Generation-l mean the PRD-as being of higher quality than the generations that have gone before. Since you were children you have been educated with the political lies of the New Order,' painting the New Order as angels and depicting all those layers of society who refuse to defend it as devils. From primary school to university. And you all have seen through those lies.
You are of the Left, that is you side with people, the lower levels of society. Because for so long the people have just been the playthings of the elite. Except during the Old Order, because in that period there were political forces that stood beside the people. The fall of the
Old Order meant that the people and the country became loot for multinational capitalism working together with the national elite as their guard dogs.
Let us make a comparison with the Young Generation of the years before 1920. They, university students who received scholarships from the colonial government in the Netherlands as well as the exiles of the Indische discovered a homeland and nation and they called it Indonesia. This was a glorious and great discovery.
Unfortunately, the flaws of this discovery were as great as its glory. There was no socio-political concept and it was imbued with antipathy to history. For example, the name Indonesia means "Indian islands." The name itself was invented by an Englishman and then popularised by the German ethnologist, Adolf Bastian (1826-1905). The name "India" for Indonesia originates from the Western nation's hunt for spices in the Moluccas starting in the early 15'h century, a hunt that led to the whole of the non-Western world being dominated by the West. These spices came from what is known today as Indonesia, but always traded as "made in India". While under Portuguese domination, it was known as Portuguese India.
Under Dutch colonialism it was called Dutch India... [But] History had given birth to two names for what is Indonesia now, namely "Nusantara" during the period of the kingdom of Majapahit, which means "islands in between (two continents), and even older is "Dipantara" from the time of the Singasari kingdom, which "fortress between (two continents).
This older name is pregnant with political meaning because the King of Singasari, Kertanegara, built military alliances with other Southeast Asian International Viewpoint #314 September 1999
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* Indonesia coastal kingdoms against the expansion of Kublai Khan from the north.
And even till today, there are still no voices, not a single voice, calling for correction of all this.