TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Manpower Minister Ida Fauziyah wrote an open letter to labor unions in response to the strike which was planned to take place on October 6-8, 2020, as a protest against the passage of the omnibus bill on Job Creation into law.

“I ask to think again calmly because, in this current situation, it is clearly not possible to take to the streets, to gather. The COVID-19 pandemic is still high, and there is no vaccine yet,” said Ida in a letter published on the ministry’s Instagram account on Monday night, October 5, 2020. The ministry’s spokesperson Dicky Risyana confirmed the letter.

According to Ida, her side deliberated the job creation bill formally through the tripartite forum and informally throughout 2020. She claimed she had received and acknowledged workers’ aspirations. “We include their aspirations in this bill as much as possible,” Ida said. “At the same time, we also receive aspirations from various parties.”

Ida asked workers to consider the planned strike and read the law thoroughly in which she claimed some of the aspirations had been accommodated. “So a strike is no longer relevant,” she underlined.

The Manpower Minister also called on workers to sit together, saying she was enthusiastically waiting for them in a dialogue to find a middle ground, instead of taking to the street.

The Indonesian Worker Union Confederation (KSPI) president Said Iqbal said that many labor unions would still hold a strike from October 6 to 8, 2020, as a form of protest against the Omnibus Law on Job Creation that has been passed by the parliament on Monday, October 5. 2020.

Read also: Job Creation Law Scraps Workers' Rights for Two Days Off Per Week

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