Economic development and political change in a workers' community in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Abstract

Why did the number of strikes and other forms of labor unrest in Indonesia increase so dramatically in the early 1990s? A number of researchers have attempted to address this question through examination of economic factors and top-down political changes. Such explanations, while accounting for shifts in labor policy, fail to address the question of why workers themselves choose to strike. This dissertation explores the question of workers' rising consciousness through analysis of fieldwork in a proletarianized urban community. Fieldwork involved not only participant-observation and life history interviews with workers, but also in-depth case studies of strikes and protests at factories in West Jakarta. Rural migration to the city has been occurring at a rapid rate over the past two decades, fueled by rapidly expanding employment opportunities in the manufacturing sector. Interviews and a review of relevant literature revealed that workers in this sector simultaneously experienced growing dissatisfaction and increased repression of their organizations and activities throughout the 1980s. What pushed them from grumbling, complaints and foot-dragging to organized protest? The dissertation argues that from the workers' point of view, the situation in the early 1990s was subtly and significantly altered by the symbolic wherewithal provided by several new labor groups and NGOs. Although in reality the groups' memberships were small and their direct influence limited, their existence, coupled with news of successful strikes elsewhere in Jakarta, served as the spark needed to ignite the already smouldering discontent of these factory workers. The thesis documents workers' reports of rising awareness of their rights, their individual decisions to participate in or lead the activity, the events themselves, and the subsequent shift in workers' perception of their own power and relevance to the Indonesian polity.