Special and Unique Approaches, Strategies, and Tactics to Organize Women Workers

Jumisih, Leader of FBLP

In the garment and textile industries in the Nusantara Bonded Industrial Zone (KBN) in Cakung, North Jakarta, for example, where of 100.000 workers 95 per cent are female, only one federation (Across Factory Labor Federation - FBLP), is lead and managed by a majority of women workers; the others are still led by men. FBLP is the smallest federation in the zone but is famous for its determination and militancy in defending workers and women workers rights. It is also famous for being the only consistent labor federation in that zone, free from corruption and bribery by the bosses. FBLP lead the garment and textile sectors strike in the zone on 2010 and 2013. (Zely Ariane, 2014)

by : Jumisih – FBLP

Women workers in Jakarta face various problems in their workplaces, for instance unpaid forced overtime, sexual harassment, infringement on their maternity rights, low wages, job uncertainty caused by temporary contracts, arbitrary lay-offs, and physical and verbal violence. Besides those, at home they must still single-handedly carry out domestic works, properly take care of their children, perform side jobs to alleviate economic pressures, and sometimes they even suffer domestic violence. To overcome those problems certainly women workers need to organize themselves.Nevertheless, the organizing of women workers especially at labour-intensive industries, is a specific challenge.

Besides being tied by unfairly long work hours, women workers are also tied by domestic works.Furthermore, usually they have low education, come from poor families and rural regions.The whole situation, and the women workers’ conditions, mentioned above, often make it difficult for women workers to join any labour union, so that to organize and involve them in labours’ struggles, special and unique approaches, strategies, and tactics are needed.

Forced overtime causes workers not to have enough time to develop themselves, nor to interact with their families. Domestic works that must be carriedout single-handedly by women workers cause them to suffer severe lack of time to rest, so that their health deteriorates, their children suffer lack of attention, and potential social pressures if the domestic works are not carried out satisfactorily raise their stress level. All of those burdens suffered by women workers worsen the alienation among them, and between them and other people.

One of the goals of labour unions is to facilitate women workers to supersede the alienation in order to realize conditions that allow them to develop more fully. Considering the problems mentioned above, the Across Factory Labour Federation (Federasi Buruh Lintas Pabrik – FBLP) chooses approaches that do not aggravate alienation, that is, by exercizing personal-persuasive approaches. To carry out effective organizing, FBLP continuously transforms itself so that it is able to more effectively facilitate its members and potential members overcome the problems of low wages, unpaid overtime, forced overtime, arbitrary lay-offs, infringement on their maternity rights, sexual harassment, job uncertainty caused by temporary contracts, and physical and verbal violence.

To stop any pressures to workers to carryout forced overtime, our strategies are : educating FBLP’s members to refuse forced overtime instructions, and requiring FBLP’s representatives at the factory level to: (1) collect legal evidences on forced overtime and process any violations legally, and (2) put pressures on the factory supervisors to stop forced overtime.

In order to help enable women workers to have enough time and energy to join FBLP or become more active in the organization, while still being able, together with their family members, to carry out optimally domestic works and child-nurturing, our strategies are :

a.Educating members to provide them with the awareness that domestic works and child-nurturing should be handled together, and are not only the duties of women, and training them how to assertively convince their husbands to play a sufficiently active role.

b.Providing childcare facilities

c.Providing educations at their living quarters or at locations that are nearest their living quarters to reduce their distance, time, and cost of travelling. 

To overcome constraints (that are) caused by low education levels, FBLP provides as many as possible facilitators who are capable to facilitate members’ learning processes according to their needs, creates standard education moduls with language that is easy to understand, with big enough fonts, with enough pictures when necessary, and that are conveyed with two-ways and interactive communications. The educations are carriedout with an egalitarian spirit.

With such approaches, we hope that the lack of confidence of workers who come from rural regions can also be overcome. It is obvious that because organizing women workers is absolutely necessary, it is essential for FBLP to continuously transform itself to become more effective and to be more capable to carry out properly suitable strategies, tactics, and approaches.