October 1996 Current labor legislation in Indonesia is a mixed bag of laws protecting workers' welfare but controlling organized labor. The country must take care not to favor centrally mandated labor standards over those negotiated between workers and their employers. Nayar compares Indonesian labor legislations with labor policies in five other APEC countries: Chile, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, and the United States. She focuses on legislation affecting union regulation, minimum wages, nonwage compensation, and working conditions. Current legislation in Indonesia is a mixed bag of laws protecting workers' welfare but controlling organized labor. Indonesian laws restrict the ability of labor organizations to effectively represent workers to management at the plant level. In this, they are similar to Malaysian laws and, to less extent, new Korean legislation. They provide a stark contrast to current legislation in Chile and the United States. But Indonesian legislation governing minimum wages, mandated nonwage benefits, and other labor standards appear to be at least as generous as legislation in the five other countries, which all have substantially higher per capita incomes. Indonesia is under pressure to ease restrictions on unions. Nayar suggests that allowing effective plant-level bargaining could give workers more of a voice at the workplace, but that improving industrial relations will require more than legislative changes. Careful changes in legislation and in industrial relations - and increased deregulation and competition in product markets - could help unions play a more positive role, while downplaying labor's more negative role. She cautions against centrally mandating labor standards instead of letting workers and their employers negotiate them at local plants. This paper is the first in a series of studies on labor market issues initiated by the Bank's East Asia and Pacific Region, Country Department III.

Penerbit : Airlangga University Press ISBN: 9786024737689 Introduction to Commercial Laws in Indonesia and Malaysia offers an overview of relevant topics in commercial laws from a comparative perspective, to facilitate understanding of commercial laws in Indonesia and Malaysia. Both Indonesia and Malaysia legal systems have their own specific and detailed principles and rules on commercial laws, but the transnationalization of trade and legal practice means that businessmen and legal practitioners may need to apply a comparative approach.

As China, Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia become world economic powers, questions arise regarding the fate of workers in these countries. This book examines the difficult road traveled by human rights movements in these nations when trying to create independent labor organizations free from governmental interference. The in-depth treatment includes: a worker's rights/labor standards model individumental interference comprehensive data tables on many aspects of the labor struggle ally crafted for each of these nations comprehensive data tables on many aspects of the labor struggle China's problems as it moves from complete state economic control to a modified form of capitalism.

The Indonesian Journal of International & Comparative Law: Socio-Political Perspectives is a forum for progressive domestic entrenchement of the cosmopolitan values that has been going on for over six decades at the international plane which is an initiative of the Institute for Migrant Rights, an academic based initiative that emphasize the inadequacy of the prevailing models that tends to exemplify the State centrality in international issues. As the Institute noted in its founding document, "the traditional models of advocacy that predominate have produced very limited results in terms of actual government protection for this population [that] failed to link the international law and human rights."

August 1996 Personnel management and incentive systems help firms establish a comparative advantage. Pay scales and hiring, firing and promotion decisions are central to competitive strategy. Ideally, labor regulations should facilitate voluntary agreements between employers and workers, helping reduce transaction costs. Since the mid-1980s, deregulation has proceeded rapidly in Indonesia. Employment opportunities, the capacity to generate income, and the opportunity to negotiate better working conditions have all expanded. Still, many Indonesians have voiced concern that workers have not shared enough in the benefits of economic development. Many hold the view that increasing the minimum wage would bring the bottom wages up and reduce wage differentials. Additionally, international agencies such as the International Labour Organisation and representatives of the U.S. government have criticized Indonesia for violations of labor standards. In response, the Indonesian government increased workers' statutory rights and removed obstacles to collective bargaining. Real minimum wages doubled between 1988 and 1995. Enforcement of regulations toughened. While in earlier periods statutory rights applied to a minority in the public sector, the expansion of manufacturing employment has broadened the coverage of these statutes, requiring the Ministry of Manpower to perform the nearly impossible task of enforcing them. Now the government should close the gap between statutory rights and voluntarily agreed-on working conditions. This means correcting the legal standards and reducing government intervention in labor disputes. Current labor regulations in Indonesia inhibit constructive discourse between workers and employers in three areas: dismissals, dispute resolution mechanisms, and contributions to social security. More appropriate legislative action, which also takes into account the role of other agencies is needed in two areas: job safety and child labor. Personnel management and incentive structures help firms establish a comparative advantage. Pay scales and hiring, firing and promotion decisions are central to performance evaluation and competitive strategy. Individual and collective bargaining is at the heart of labor-management relations in modern enterprises, and industrial action (or the real threat of it) is generally part of negotiation strategy. Inviting public intervention rather than allowing such mechanisms as strikes and lockouts to operate isolates negotiations from market conditions. Ideally, labor regulations should facilitate voluntary agreements between employers and workers, helping reduce transaction costs. They often do the opposite -- and also discourage the creation of jobs. Keeping Indonesia's economy competitive requires a system of industrial relations that relies on voluntary negotiations of wages and working conditions. The tasks workers perform and the employers for whom they perform them must be subject to change. This process is a normal feature of healthy labor markets. This paper -- a product of the Poverty and Social Policy Department -- is part of a larger study of the labor market in Indonesia undertaken by East Asia and Pacific, Country Department III. It was presented at a joint Ministry of Manpower-World Bank workshop, Indonesian Workers in the 21st Century, Jakarta, April 2-4, 1996.