EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The main principle of neo-liberalism is to enforce governments worldwide to change their national laws and policies towards 'free market' implementation. Neo-liberalism pushes national governments to apply trade and capital liberation, deregulation, privatisation of state-owned companies and labour market liberalisation. The consequence is the emergence of the global labour market as a competitive arena for working people from all over the world to find jobs.

Neo-liberalism encourages companies to relocate their production to cheaper labour sources and to adopt contractual and flexible working relationships, including outsourcing and home-based work. This rearranges the nature of working relationships, from permanent jobs to contractual and flexible jobs. These new working conditions also systematically cut workers earnings, smash working community and their family down, and bring poverty.

Due to feminisation of the manufacturing industry, women workers are predominantly the victims. The women workers who have been made redundant, are confronted with conditions such as lack of other promising work, lack of protection by the law and lack of protection from social security systems.

The policies of a neo-liberal regime weaken the bargaining positions of the trade unions vis-a-vis employers and governments (in a tri-partite bargaining process). Under such difficult conditions, it becomes harder to develop solidarity among working people and to organise trade unions.

Based on work experience from 1995 to 2005, Kelompok Kerja Humanika (Humanika Working Group), together with SBR, DBJT and SGBI, recognises the need for changes in organising strategies. Before 1998, organising work was done by labour NGOs in relatively closed and small groups, due to the repressive political situation. In the next period, around 1998/1999, organising work became more open and was done by trade unions. In 1999/2000, due to the ongoing economic crisis, more dismissed workers entered the informal economy. They were absorbed into communities. The trade unions responded to this situation by changing their strategies. They started organising communities together with formal economy workers.

By applying this new strategy, trade unions aimed to establish a democratic working people’s organisation. Even though they failed in achieving this goal, the demand to organise working people has increased. The changing pattern of organisation of work from permanent jobs to casualised work is threatening the trade union and labour movement. It is becoming more difficult to get loyal long term trade union members because of job insecurity. Secondly this is causing fragmentation in the labour force into different groups e.g. street vendors, hawkers, home-based workers, migrant workers. Such threats endanger the existence of trade unions. In 2005, Humanika Working Group took up the initiative to revive community organising work.

There are some obstacles in doing organising work:

• lesser financial resources than traditional trade unions (which usually comes from membership fees)
• decline of quality of life of workers
• weak organisational & management skills in the alliance
• the slow process of instigating new activists
• tighter control over workers movement
• stricter laws to preserve investor’s interests

These obstacles impact negatively on the capability of the labour movement to withstand the pressure of neo-liberalism.

For the informal workers, the conditions are even worse. Despite their increasing numbers, they receive no legal protection as the present regulations and laws do not recognise their existence.

Despite the obstacles, Humanika Working Group finds several positive features in organising workers:

• increased awareness among workers about global issues and they are no longer trapped in a cycle of their local issues dealing with factory-compound- issues
• a sense of growing solidarity among trade unions
• a newly emergent working people identity
• accessibility of trade unions to the informal workers
• opportunity to establish an alliance within the labour movement organisations at regional and national levels
• a broader network with overseas labour organisations and trade unions providing support to the Indonesian labour movement
• an increase in women’s involvement in decision making in labour organisations and trade unions.

This conducive atmosphere is a result of the government’s policies to let people organise and express ideas, although in a limited way. There is also a relatively independent press.

Recommendations

• to broaden the struggle of trade unions from working places to communities
• to implement a gender equality perspective in trade union education, organising and advocacy programmes.
• to actively recruit new members by arranging popular activities, such as holding bazaars and cultural events.
• to unify various movement organisations (labour, peasants, women, youth, etc.) at local, regional and international levels in order to establish a solid force, which is able to resist and face the global capitalist network
• to put pressure on the government to provide decent employment, that should deal with issues of unemployment and poverty.