By Max Lane
ACTU president Martin Ferguson has publicly confirmed that he intends to continue the Australian union federation's previously covert support for the "yellow" All Indonesia Workers Union (SPSI) — the fake union run by the Suharto dictatorship.
Even Ferguson has had to admit that the SPSI is more than usually lacking in the characteristics of a real union. "It's fair to say that we seriously question the commitment of the central leadership of the SPSI to the trade union movement and grassroots activity", Ferguson told the SBS program Dateline on December 3.
He went on to say that the International Labour Organisation has called on Indonesia to face up to its responsibilities to allow a free and independent trade union movement. In a recent meeting with Indonesia's labour power minister, Abdul Latief, he said, he told Latief that the ACTU would "in no way support the central leadership of the SPSI", which has more often than not been an arm of government.
But then the smokescreen set up by Ferguson cleared away. Ferguson added that the ACTU would be helping the "sectoral unions", sometimes misleadingly referring to them as the "new independent sectoral unions". And the ACTU would support the "capacity of the SPSI".
These so-called "sectoral trade unions" are pure fig leaf. Up until 1993, the SPSI was structured as one single organisation, supposedly having workers in all industries as members. In 1993, a Ministry of Manpower regulation stated that workers' organisation should comprise federations of trade unions. Soon afterwards the SPSI changed its constitution so that now, on paper, it is a federation of different industry sectors. These are the so-called "new, independent sectoral unions" that Ferguson has now admitted that the ACTU wants to support — set up by a stroke of the pen of the SPSI central leadership.
Real unionists lost no time in attacking Ferguson's support for the fake union. In a statement issued on December 7, the national, progressive trade union, the Indonesian Workers Struggle Centre (PPBI), commented, "If we analyse the logic of Mr Ferguson's demagogy, it becomes very obvious that his plans are in line with SPSI's plans ... By saying that the ACTU was now helping the sectoral unions, it is still continuing to help the SPSI."
In a memorandum dated March 23, Alan Matheson, the ACTU international officer, stated that the ACTU believes that "free, democratic and independent unions" need to be supported — but what he mentioned specifically were the "sectoral streams" such as the maritime workers.
The much-touted independence of the maritime workers, a favourite theme of the ACTU, is at best a fantasy. Maritime workers are in fact organised in a body called Indonesian Seamen's Association (KPI), which comes under the authority of the Department of Maritime Transport and describes itself not as a trade union but as a "professional body" and states openly that its role is not to struggle over labour issues.
Repression
It is at the factory level that the SPSI plays the most repressive role. It combines with employers and the local military command (Kodim) to intimidate protesting workers. Intervention in industrial disputes is an explicit policy of Bakorstanas, the military security police, and was previously authorised by a Ministry of Labour Decree in 1986. There have been numerous cases in which striking workers are dismissed at the Military District Command office. According to the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute Foundation (YLBHI), the SPSI has also been involved in many such cases.
This is precisely why activists and workers have taken initiatives to establish independent unions such as the Indonesian Workers for Prosperity Union (SBSI) and the PPBI. They now cover tens of thousands of workers and lead many of the militant strikes and protests demanding improvements in wages and conditions and the right to organise freely.
At the moment, 84 SBSI members, including its general secretary, are in jail. Warrants for interrogation have also been issued for key leaders of the PPBI. It is these unions, fighting independently for workers' rights, that Ferguson and the ACTU have decided to attack.
Both Ferguson and Matheson told Dateline that the SBSI and other independent unions are made up mostly of students and lawyers more interested in democratic rights than "trade union work". It seems that the ACTU chiefs believe that workers don't want or need democratic rights. Does this tell us anything about the ACTU?
According to Matheson, activists for the SBSI have been arrested and therefore "are made up of students, academics" and others, not genuine workers.
When a delegation from PPBI and Aksi (Indonesia Solidarity Action) met Ferguson on December 5 in Melbourne, Ferguson reiterated the ACTU's position.
According to Vannessa Hearman from Aksi, one trade union official in attendance told the PPBI representative that the independent unions were ineffective because their activists kept getting arrested! Under a dictatorship, however, it is the effective worker organisations that are harassed. Political struggle, i.e. the struggle for the freedom to organise and to strike, must inevitably be a central part of the program of any genuine union.
The attacks on the independent unions for involving students and lawyers is the ultimate hypocrisy from the ACTU. Ferguson and Matheson themselves entered the trade union movement not from working in industry but from university and the church respectively.
Meanwhile the SBSI and PPBI are leading strikes and protests involving tens of thousands of workers. SBSI general secretary Moktar Pakpahan, for example, is in jail for "inciting" 30,000 workers in Medan.
Tripartite scabbing
In addition to launching this public relations campaign to legitimise the SPSI's new structure behind the smokescreen of attacking the "SPSI core leadership", the ACTU is also party to the Australian government's official "industrial relations cooperation" with the Suharto dictatorship's Ministry of Manpower, headed by Abdul Latief, a textile factory owner who, as Dateline reported, doesn't even pay his own workers the minimum wage.
This cooperation is overseen by the International Affairs Committee of the tripartite National Labour Advisory Council, upon which Ferguson and Matheson both sit. Under this program, Peter Duncan, a former official of the ACTU, has been posted to the ILO in Jakarta to prepare a so-called "workers education program".
Although the scheme is financed to the tune of an initial $75,500 and part of an ILO project, Duncan is located in the Indonesian Manpower Foundation (YTKI). According to the December 7 PPBI statement, the YTKI is an institute set up by the dictatorship's Ministry of Manpower and by the SPSI itself!
Defending the program, Duncan told Dateline that only "elected grassroots representatives" would be part of the program. Even the official ILO representative raised doubts about this when he told the Dateline crew to turn off the camera "because I don't like this line of questioning".
Duncan's statement is nonsense in a situation where genuine elections of any kind are very difficult. Furthermore, the regime will not give legal status to either SBSI or PPBI, so neither can openly establish branches in factories. SBSI or PPBI members can openly stand in factory elections only at the risk of being sacked, or jailed, tortured or even killed.
Activists in Jakarta now worry that the ACTU program will eventually lead to the establishment of showcase factories, where so-called effective SPSI sectoral units will be set up for international guests to visit. This would fit in with efforts to win international recognition for the SPSI while allowing the dictatorship to continue its policy of suppression in the rest of the country.
Indonesian protests
Responding to these developments the PPBI's statement makes two demands on the ACTU. The first is that the ACTU stop all cooperation with and financial support for the SPSI and any other "labour" organisations formed by the government, including the Ministry of Manpower, the YTKI and the sectoral trade unions in the SPSI. The second is that the ACTU reject being turned into a tool of the Australian and Indonesian governments in their efforts to smooth commercial relations between the two countries.
Even the SPSI official spokesperson interviewed on the Dateline program admitted that they thought the ACTU support for the SPSI was due to the Australian government preferring to strengthen the SPSI "with so many Australian factories moving to Indonesia".
Concern at the ACTU's role goes beyond the PPBI. On October 27, the YLBHI relaunched its campaign against ACTU-SPSI cooperation. Its director, Adnan Buyung Nasution, has written to the Australian ambassador expressing concern at the Worker Education project.
The YLBHI also republished a 1993 statement of concern issued by the Committee Against ACTU-SPSI Cooperation, which comprises 18 worker support organisations. This statement demanded: 1. cancel all plans to cooperate with and provide or channel financial assistance to SPSI; 2. continue to block any attempts by SPSI and other "yellow" trade unions in the Asia-Pacific region from recognition or affiliation with ICFTU; 3. exert as much pressure as possible on the Indonesian government to remove restrictions on the right to organise, and allow workers to form their own unions which can truly represent their interests without intervention by the military or employers; 4. pressure the Indonesian government to change its labour policies, in particular to withdraw of Ministry of Labor regulations regulating the formation, registration and recognition of trade unions; 5. support genuine worker organisations and NGOs struggling to improve labour conditions in Indonesia; 6. provide a public statement in response to these proposals.