November 2016 

This case study describes how Indonesian garment and footwear workers, and allied organisations have used a combination of strategies to pursue their rights, which includes engaging with local and international non-judicial mechanisms…Although Indonesia’s labour laws are relatively progressive, its enforcement strategy and industrial dispute resolution remains weak. Workers who collectively organise and take industrial action in pursuit of improved wages and conditions can face significant intimidation and threats to their job security…The Indonesian trade unions we interviewed generally use a combination of strategies to pursue rights grievances…Our research suggests that…non-judicial redress mechanisms can play a more useful role than is apparent when they are considered in isolation…However, while we found evidence that combining strategies in this way can result in improved respect for workers’ rights, in those cases where some form of human rights redress was achieved, it was generally partial and in some cases the improvements in respect for human rights proved to be temporary…