Page 58 - e-KLIPING KETENAGAKERJAAN 12 OKTOBER 2020

From February 2019 to Feb-ruary of this year, 1.73 million Indonesians entered the workforce,
bringing the nation's total to 137.91 million. Over the same period, 1.67 million people gained
employment, Statistics Indonesia (BPS) data shows.

The country's unemployment rate was 4.99 percent in February of this year, slightly lower than
the 5.01 percent unemployment rate in the same month the year before. Indonesia's
unemployment rate steadily declined from 5.94 percent in August 2014 a few months before
President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo took Office to the figure in February of this year.

On Thursday, 11 ministers de-fended the controversial law as public protests raged over provi-
sions that labor unions said could jeopardize labor' rights and en-courage easy hiring and firing.
The ministers also sought to defend the deliberation of the law, which experts and activists say
lacked transparency and public debate.

Thegovernmenthopes the omnibus law, which has altered more than 79 previous laws and elimi-
nated thousands of provisions, will boost investment and create jobs in the country. The law reg-
ulates a variety of processes and institutions, from labor and business licensing to education and
sovereign wealth funds.

Indonesia's gross domestic product contracted 5.32 percent in the second quarter of this year
and is expected to shrink annual-ly for the first time since the 1998 Asian financial crisis amid
falling househokl consumption, which typically accounts for more than half the nation's economy,
and business investment.

Aloysius Budi Santoso, the Apindo representative on the jobs law drafting team, said the law
would uphold workers' rights, such as maternityand menstrual leave.

"If there is any article that is not iricluded in the Job Creation Law, then it still refers to Law No.
13/2003 on labor," said Aloysius, who also serves as chief of corporate human capital
development at diversified conglomerate PT Astra International.
"The [jobs law] covers only the most important parts. The details will be derived in several
[imple-menting] regulations, such as presidential regulations, presidential decrees or anything
else," he added.

Last week, the House an-nounced that the draft agreed upon in the plenary session on Oct. 5
and circulated among jour-nalists was not, in fact, the final draft of the law, further obfuscat-ing
the already opaque legislative process. As of the time of writing, the final draft has not been
made available to the public.

Center of Reform on Economics (CORE) Indonesia executive director Mohammad Faisal said high
labor costs and low productivity should be solved by improving worker productivity rather than
passing the far-reaching law. "Improving productivity is what should be done, not pressuring
workers' welfare," he said on Friday.
Companies, he added, could train workers to improve their productivity and the government
could offer subsidies to those that did.

Bahana Sekuritas wrote in a research note on Oct. 5 that Indonesia's rigid labor laws had helped
cushion the economic blow caused by the unfolding CO -VID-19 pandemic, evincedby Indonesia's
low unemployment rate compared to countries with few-er labor protections, such as the United
States. The government said in June that it expected the unemployment rate to rise to between
8.1 and 9.2 percent this year and that some 5.5 million people would lose their jobs during the
pandemic-in-duced economic downturn.

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