David Welsh, Southeast Asia country director of the Solidarity Center, said: “With the enormous profit margins [brands] have enjoyed on the backs of workers in Southeast Asia, they are easily placed to sustain workers and factories over this period.”
Even so, David Welsh, country director of Southeast Asia of the Solidarity Center, a nonprofit aligned with the U.S.-based labor federation AFL-CIO, said the reforms, in the garment sector at least, risk amounting to a “race to the bottom”–slashing benefits to appease big international brands that can afford to pay. During the three months ended August–the most recent data available–Sweden’s H&M, which has manufacturing facilities in Indonesia, reported a gross profit margin of 50 percent before tax.
While studies have shown the prevalence of violence against women at home and in their communities, no comprehensive data exists to document the extent of gender-based violence (GBV) at work. To better understand GBV at work, 17 activists and female leaders of workers in three Indonesian unions talked with garment workers. Here are their findings.
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Like women around the world, Indonesian factory, farm and office workers frequently face sexual harassment, bullying, rape and other forms of gender-based violence (GBV) on the job—yet many are unaware that anything can be done to address it.
Now, union women leaders in Indonesia are developing unique strategies to educate and empower working women on their rights to safe workplaces free from gender-based abuse.
“This issue is a big issue but it never has been raised up compared with other issues in the union,” says Sumiyati, chairperson for Women and Children’s Affairs at the National Industrial Workers Union Federation (SPN–NIWUF), a Solidarity Center partner.
“Unions in the past only focused on economic issues—gender-based violence issues have never been our priority in the past”—Nurlatifah, SPN–NIWUF board member. Credit: Solidarity Center/Tula Connell
“Unions in the past only focused on economic issues—gender-based violence issues have never been our priority in the past,” agrees Nurlatifah, SPN–NIWUF board member.
Sumiyati and Nurlatifah, with support from their union, are spearheading the launch of a six-month pilot project, “Free GBV Zone,” at factories where SPN-NIWUF local unions and employers agree to participate.
At least two factory unions in Jakarta have signed up so far, says Sumiyati, speaking through a translator. Training workers will be a key part of the process, which also involves mapping out the type and amount of gender-based violence at the worksite and working with the union and employer on implementing recommendations to prevent GBV. Essential to the project’s success is setting up a monitoring system to assess the implementation of the recommendations.
A 2017 survey by the Indonesian women’s rights organization, Perempuan Mahardika, revealed that 56.5 percent of the 773 women garment workers in a Jakarta industrial complex were sexually harassed.
Yet as elsewhere around the world, comprehensive data is not available on gender-based violence in Indonesian workplaces. Following two Solidarity Center trainings in 2018 in which women garment workers in Yogykarta and Samarang explored the root causes of gender-based violence and discussed the gender-based violence they experienced and witnessed in the factories, the women devised a survey to determine the extent of GBV in the world of work.
The five month in-depth research project project among 105 women factory workers found that of those who had been subject to gender-based violence, 71 percent had experienced it at work. After analyzing the results, project leaders crafted a report they will share with the International Labor Organization (ILO) as well as with unions throughout Indonesia. Now, says Nurlatifah, “the union tries to mainstream this issue into every activity the union conducts.”
The report finds that “fueling gender-based violence in the world of work is a lack of understanding about GBV, few or no regulations protecting female workers from violence and little awareness about violence in world of work by employers, the government and workers.”
Rita Shalya, KSPI secretary-general, conducts trainings for women workers to ensure they know their rights to a violence-free workplace. Credit: Solidarity Center/Tula Connell
For unions, changing those dynamics starts with awareness training for workers.
“Sometimes women do not understand about gender-based violence,” says Rita Shalya, secretary-general of the Confederation of Indonesian Worker’s Union (KSPI). “Step by step, we try to make them open their eyes about gender-based violence,” she says.
Shalya, who also is vice president of the Pharmaceutical and Health Workers Union (PHWU), has engaged with nurses and other union members in education trainings and follow up through WhatsApp groups to raise awareness of the issue with the ultimate goal of ending gender-based violence at hospitals and health care facilities.
“When I was working in hospital, there was so much violence coming from doctors and coworkers, and also patients,” says Shalya, who experienced such abuse first hand. “It’s very risky in the hospital.”
As a new hospital staff member years ago, Shalya was among six co-founders of a union. Now, she is bringing her deep sense of social justice to focus on ending gender-based violence at work and has an ambitious plan to set up a counseling center for union members experiencing sexual harassment and other forms of gender-based violence on the job. The center will be staffed with union volunteers, all of whom will be trained by the global union Public Services International (PSI).
Shalya has another goal as well: “Women matters are not a big focus of unions, and so I am trying to put it on the agenda.”
Unions in Indonesia also are working broadly at the international and national levels. SPN–NIWUF partners with some 50 organizations and unions in a nationwide campaign seeking government support for an ILO convention (regulation) on gender-based violence at work.
The convention, championed for years by unions and their allies worldwide, including the Solidarity Center, would address violence and harassment at work. In June, workers, employers and governments will negotiate final language on a binding convention and recommendation at the International Labor Conference.
In Indonesia, Parliament “is actively supporting a campaign on gender-based violence because of the work the campaign has done to build consciousness,” says Izzah Inzamliyah, Solidarity Center program officer in Indonesia. The Draft Law on the Elimination of Sexual Violence has drawn a sharp backlash from conservative forces who say it puts too much emphasis on women’s rights, violates religious values and promotes sex outside marriage.
Meanwhile, Indonesia’s official Commission on Violence against Women reports that there are hundreds of discriminatory national and local regulations targeting women.
For unions, addressing gender-based violence at work is “important for creating a working environment free from gender-based violence for our members,” says Sumiyati. A lawyer by training, she worked for years in the color laboratory of a textile plant, where many women discussed with her incidents of abuse at work.
And when women experience safe workplaces, they also will be more likely to become involved in their unions and communities. Sumiyati cites one shoe factory where the majority of its 52,000 workers are women—yet women’s leadership in the factory union is only 16 percent.
“It’s important [for women workers] to understand about gender-based violence so they will be comfortable conducting their activities so they can be safe and be active in taking part in union leadership and the process of making decisions,” she says.
Women trade unionists in Indonesia and in Honduras and other Central American countries who are tackling gender-based violence at work often start by changing a culture of patriarchy within their own unions, according to speakers at a Solidarity Center-sponsored panel today in New York City.
Alexis de Simone, Robin Runge, Nurlatifah and Izzah Inzamliyah discussed strategies for ending gender-based violence at work. Credit: Solidarity Center/Tula Connell
“Unions in the past only focused on economic issues—gender-based violence issues have never been our priority,” says Nurlatifah, board member of the 341,000-member National Industrial Workers Union Federation (SPN–NIWUF) in Indonesia. But after she and other union leaders conducted an in-depth research project among women members that showed 81 percent had experienced gender-based violence, “the union tries to mainstream this issue into every activity the union conducts.”
Nurlatifah spoke on the panel, “Gender-Based Violence at Work and Social Protections,” co-sponsored by the Global Fund for Women, one of dozens of parallel events taking place this week in conjunction with the 63rd session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) meeting March 11–22. The CSW, a global policy-making body dedicated to promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women, this year is focusing on social protection systems, access to public services and sustainable infrastructure for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.
Alexis de Simone highlighted how women in Honduras have addressed gender-based violence in garment factories and farm fields,
In highlighting how workers are organizing and building power to confront gender-based violence in Central America, Alexis de Simone, Solidarity Center senior program officer for the Americas, says years of leadership training among women union members in Honduras’s garment and agriculture sectors has led to more than 80 women becoming union leaders. They now negotiate contracts that address key women’s issues like maternity leave, and in the agriculture sector, have developed a cross-border network that shares contract language that benefits working women.
The Solidarity Center assisted many of those programs in Central America “and now is working with our partners in 17 different countries to support women worker efforts to define gender-based violence at work and to make it a priority with their unions,” says Robin Runge, Solidarity Center senior gender specialist and panel moderator.
Runge described the global union effort to secure passage of an International Labor Organization standard (convention) that would address violence and harassment at work, with a special emphasis on gender-based violence. Final negotiations are slated for June.
The Solidarity Center is supporting training that addresses gender-based violence in 17 countries—Robin Runge. Credit: Solidarity Center/Tula Connell
Women union leaders’ work challenging and addressing gender-based violence at work by focusing first on educating members and shifting union power dynamics that long favored men plants the seed for broader outreach.
Union leaders and members are now working toward passage of legislation in Honduras to address gender-based violence, says de Simone. And in Indonesia, SPN–NIWUF partners with some 50 organizations and unions in a nationwide campaign seeking government support for the ILO convention on gender-based violence at work. Meanwhile, the Indonesian Parliament “is actively supporting a campaign on gender-based violence because of the work the campaign has done to build consciousness,” says Izzah Inzamliyah, Solidarity Center program officer in Indonesia, who also helped translate for Nurlatifah.
Lawmakers would not have even considered such legislation before women across the nation raised their voices to end gender-based violence, she says.