Beyond Labour Market Flexibility: Issues and Options for Post-Crisis Indonesia

This paper argues that the notion of labour market flexibility represents an inadequate framework for understanding the challenges faced by a democratic Indonesia in the post-crisis period. Such challenges entail the need to nourish employment-intensive recovery, developing a credible and cordial industrial relations system and empowering workers to cope with the problems of vulnerability and risk that are inherent in any globally-oriented market economy. The uncritical embrace of labour market flexibility in the pre-crisis period overlooked some inherent problems, such as the failure to develop a coherent industrial relations system. Although labour market flexibility helped prevent a sharp rise in unemployment during the economic crisis, the plummeting of real wages strengthens the case for government interventions in dealing with adverse labour market outcomes.