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January 2000
Transcribed by Daniel Hunter.
Published Courtesy of Campaign for Labour Rights
I came from a very poor family. My father had only an elementary education with no skills. He taught himself electricity and, because of his lack of education, he was only able to get temporary jobs as a helper for a technician. He was not paid minimum wage. My mom also only had an elementary school education. She worked as a housewife. Therefore, my parents could not provide enough for their seven children.
Of my siblings, I am the only one with a high school education. After I graduated from high school, I decided to go straight to the workplace to help get a better living for my family. I worked for PT Lintas, a factory that made shoes for Adidas and then later for Nike. The factory that I was working for had 4,500 workers. Most of them are temporary workers. Most of us were paid below the minimum wage and therefore could not live properly.
While I was training a new employee in 1996, I had an accident that disfigured my hand and made me disabled. I was stationed in the technical division which was involved with transforming raw materials into rubber soles. The machine that I was working with had three metal rollers that pressed the rubber materials into outer soles of a thickness of 3-4 millimeters.
For this process, I had to manually insert the raw material into the metal rollers wearing gloves. The material was heated to 45 degrees Celsius [113 Fahrenheit] and was therefore very sticky. My glove got stuck to the rubber and was pulled into the metal rollers and I lost two of my fingers. The accident could have been avoided because there is an emergency switch that could immediately turn off the metal rollers - but the switch was broken. Therefore a friend of mine had to run to another switch some distance away to turn off the machine.
My accident happened while the PT Lintas factory was producing for Adidas. After the accident, I learned that five other similar accidents had occurred with that same machine while the factory was producing for Adidas. The factory later switched to producing for Nike and, after that change, two other accidents of the same type happened on that same machine. In all of those accidents, the emergency switch did not work and, if it had worked, would have prevented all the accidents.
Over the course of the next few months after the accident, I was under recovery and was given a leave from the factory and also some medicine when I was an outpatient in order to assist in the recovery. I was then given 2,250,000 rupiah in compensation [about $150-200 U.S.] The company also gave me a new pair of gloves to cover my hand.
I tried to voice my concern using the state-sponsored labor union within the factory: SPSI (the All-Indonesian Worker's Party). However, the labor union was controlled by the Indonesian government and instead of listening to our complaints they took sides with the factory. The factory used this union to stifle our complaints. SPSI was created by the government and at the factory level was created by the company. The leaders were actually determined by the company! Once again, it is important to emphasize that their focus was not on supporting the workers' struggle but on supporting the factory's interests.
Realizing the inability of the labor union SPSI to voice our concerns, I decided that I would create a new labor union called PERBUPAS, which is an acronym for The Labor Union for Shoe Factory Workers. We created this labor union as an independent labor union that would fight for the rights of workers, by workers.
We began by holding discussion groups started by students and workers. We held these discussions on a regular basis. We began to hold these discussions in order to talk about raising the minimum wage in 1996. As we grew, we began monitoring the procedure that the management had done within the factory. We realized that the factory time and time again violated the Nike Code of Conduct that should be implemented. Instead, the company simply used the Nike Code of Conduct as a decoration on the wall.
After watching and spying on our activities within PERBUPAS, the management began intimidating our members one by one. They threatened us, suspended us and terminated many of our members. Our union was continually followed by the military and secret agents. Our members were put on a blacklist by the company so that we could not be given any wage increases or promotions.
One example of intimidation by the factory was my suspension. In my suspension letter they did not tell me why I was being suspended except that I could not work in a productive manner because of my injury. In an oral discussion, however, they told me that I was being indefinitely suspended because I was working with the union and was distributing Nike's Code of Conduct, trying to recruit for PERBUPAS and educating workers about Nike's Code of Conduct. In fact, the company offered to transfer me to another factory if I was willing to quit my union organizing.
My fellow members of PERBUPAS tried to bring my suspension case to the Indonesian government and the Nike representative in Jakarta. The Indonesian government refused to comment further on my case than agreeing with the level of compensation. The Nike representatives told me they sympathized with my case but refused to involve themselves with the "internal matters of the factory."
My status currently is still "suspended" and I have not gotten a wage since I was suspended. But I want to emphasize that this happened not just at the PT Lintas factory but at other factories, including the case of 200 PERBUPAS workers who were all dismissed in one factory. The only excuse was that the company was facing "difficult conditions" and that orders had dropped. Yet, PERBUPAS discovered that they were not facing such conditions (the number of orders had not decreased) but were in fact still hiring new workers.
While fighting for our rights, we were accused as extremists who were doing violent acts. Within the factory, members of PERBUPAS were being discriminated against and were told that we would never get a raise or be promoted. The intimidation was done by both the factory and also by the military police. The 200 dismissed workers carried out a demonstration in front of the factory but were met with the military, security forces and gangsters, who were trying to force them to quit in exchange for receiving only one month of wages. For example, in 1996 while we were having a meeting, the police came and took all of us into custody and we were held in jail for one night. Despite these threats, by 1997 PERBUPAS had in both the shoe and garment industry 3,000 workers.
I would like Nike to sanction all the factories that violated Nike's Code of Conduct. I'd like to force Nike to rename its slogan from "Just Do It" to "Do It Justice." My last demand would be for Nike to reinstate myself and all the other workers who have stood up for their rights but have been terminated because of it.
Following an extensive international campaign in support of Haryanto, he was allowed to return to work on 24 December 1999.