Dr Michele Ford
Department of Political and International Studies
Flinders University
Stream: International and Comparative Politics
Refereed: Yes
A Case for Convergence? Indonesian Labour Politics, 1973-1998
Theoretical debates about the political and economic roles of organised labour in
developing countries have long been dominated by arguments about the extent to
which developing country labour movements will follow the trajectories of the labour
movements of Europe and North America. Proponents of convergence theory in
industrial relations have historically employed models of economic and structural
convergence to argue that as developing economies became more industrialised, they
would adopt the forms of industrial relations institutions and labour movement
organisation found in industrialised countries. Conversely, opponents of industrial
relations convergence theory have argued that the cultural and historical specificities
of developing country contexts mean that international models of industrial relations
and labour movement activism are necessarily reconstituted within the local
frameworks in which they operate.
Between 1973 and 1998, Indonesian labour politics were characterised by a discourse
of indigenism. When Suharto’s New Order came to power in the late 1960s, his
government set about replacing the strong emphasis on socialist principles in labour
relations which had dominated labour politics since the early twentieth century with a
‘truly Indonesian’ form of industrial relations based on the state ideology, Pancasila.
With the implementation of Pancasila Industrial Relations, the government formally
rejected ‘foreign’ models that stressed the inherently antagonistic nature of labour
relations. On the surface, then, the Indonesian case would seem to contradict the
arguments of industrial relations convergence theorists. However, the rhetoric of
Pancasila Industrial Relations was informed both by the principles of Catholic
corporatism and international debates between Leninists and the Revisionists about
the role of trade unions. This paper examines the ideological underpinnings of
Pancasila Industrial Relations, demonstrating that Indonesian trade unions have a
‘double history’ in which international models of unionism and industrial relations
remained strongly influential despite the New Order’s attempts to reject them.