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Yuliana can’t remember the last time she had a proper sit-down meal during her lunch break at the North Jakarta garment factory where she works.

The 30-year-old mother of one said she simply doesn’t have the time, even though the workers are technically entitled to an hourlong break.

If she doesn’t eat fast and hurry back to work, she said it would mean having to stay late to meet her target for the day, something other companies might consider overtime, but for which she does not get paid.

‘Score’ system

This system of setting target outputs for workers is common among factories to make sure workers are productive and not idling their time away.

But according to Yuliana, the problem with the system — known as the “score” among workers — is that the target is always moving, usually up.

If she and her co-workers manage to consistently meet a target of sewing 600 clothing parts a day, for instance, they are soon given a higher target.

But if they don’t meet the target, it means having more to do the next day.

“So the other option is to finish them during our lunch break or after working hours,” she said.

“This has been going on for more than five years now. I used to work for hours after my workday had finished, unpaid. But now it’s not so bad anymore. Only 30 minutes, or an hour at most.”

Yuliana and her co-workers are not alone. According to Jumisih, chairwoman of the Factory Workers Forum (FBLP), this system is used by dozens of garment companies in the Nusantara Bonded Zone (KBN) Industrial Estate in North Jakarta.

For employees of these companies, said Restaria Hutabarat, a public lawyer at the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH Jakarta), the scheme is simply known as jam molor, or flexible hours.

“It’s a term for forced overtime, paid or unpaid. And indeed, it has been happening for years, especially in garment factories,” said Resta, who is currently assisting workers in a garment company in Tangerang.

The practice is illegal, she said, and that’s why it must cease.

Right or wrong?

Under any circumstance, unpaid forced overtime is against the law, according to Manpower and Transmigration Ministry spokesman Suhartono.

Workers forced to work under these circumstances can and should complain, he said, adding that the ministry’s offices in the regions monitored companies.

“We are going to check with our branches. They should check all companies regularly,” he said.

The 2003 Labor Law stipulates that there should only be seven working hours a day or 40 hours a week in a six-day workweek. For a five-day workweek, each workday is capped at eight hours.

Article 78 of the law states that “if employers make workers work more than 40 hours a week, it’s called overtime.”

However, Suhartono said work conditions were covered by the contracts signed between employees and employers.

And this is the tricky part: If employees agree to work on a target-based system, can it be considered forced overtime if they fail to reach the target within working hours?

“They are paid based on the number of items they produce, not how long they work,” said Sofjan Wanandi, chairman of the Indonesian Employers Association (Apindo).

Setting targets, he explained, allows companies to have a quantifiable way of measuring the productivity of each worker.

“If workers refuse, then we have no problem [letting them go]. There’s no pressure [on them to stay],” Sofjan said.

Resta acknowledged that under the score system, work done by employees outside the 40 hours each week to meet their target was unlikely to be considered overtime by companies.

“They have a different perspective because they operate based on profits,” she said.

But she dismissed the idea that workers would work slower if they were paid for overtime.

“I don’t believe workers would be lazy. Because in a company, jobs are linked. If Department A doesn’t finish on time, then Department B can’t finish its work either,” she said.

Ahmad Erani Yustika, an economist at the Institute for Development of Economics and Finance (Indef), agreed that the problem was complicated. He said it was understandable why companies would insist on a target, but stressed that forcing employees to work overtime without pay violated basic human values.

In the absence of specific regulations on the issue, he suggested that employers and workers reach a mutually acceptable middle ground through dialogue.

For example, workers failing to meet their targets could get disincentives such as cuts in their transportation or health benefits, while those who meet or exceed their targets would get some form of incentive.

The companies, Ahmad said, should also have set standards to measure their workers’ performance, so neither side could cheat the system.

Precedent

Nining Elitos, coordinator of the Indonesian Trade Union Alliance (Kasbi), said workers in garment companies in Tangerang and surrounding areas had previously tried to appeal against the target system.

“The practice is spreading, from North to South Jakarta to Tangerang,” she said. “We tried to question the system but failed. We didn’t get the support we needed from the government.”

A recent incident, though, has given Kasbi renewed hope.

More than 4,400 workers at Nikomas, a supplier for Nike in Serang, Banten, are getting a total of nearly $1 million for almost 600,000 hours of unpaid forced overtime over two years.

The agreement was reached in January after nearly a year of negotiations, and the company is now in the process of disbursing the payment.

“Nikomas itself wasn’t aware of the target system, but some of their supervisors set targets for their workers,” said Djoko Haryono, from the National Workers Union (SPN), which is overseeing the agreement.

As a result, thousands of Nikomas employees ended up working up to an extra two hours a day, six days a week, to meet their targets.

“[The Nikomas case] has motivated us, because we also have the same problem in the company we are working for right now,” said Sanan Setiabudi, a member of a labor union working with LBH Jakarta in a Tangerang garment company case.

Sanan said they had been forced to work under the target scheme for the past nine months, “but the workers are too afraid to testify.”

Despite the Nikomas victory, SPN’s Djoko said arguing against the target scheme was not easy. What is needed, he said, is for workers to be able to speak out openly against the system without fear of retribution.

“We have to have testimony from workers, because only through that can we make the company listen,” he said.

“[In the Nikomas case], we had hundreds of workers testifying about the scheme. And we were lucky because we were able to resolve it outside of court. I’m sure that we wouldn’t have been able to finish the case this soon had the company dragged the case to court.”

It’s a lesson Jumisih of the FBLP seems to have learned. The group took one case to court, she said, but it failed because of a lack of evidence. She said the FBLP was now counting the number of factories applying the target system.

“I want to meet the people who advocated for the Nike workers, maybe we can learn something,” she said.

Djoko said SPN was compiling its Nike success strategy into a book so others could follow. “It will be launched soon,” he said.

Jim Keady, a director of Educating for Justice, which worked with SPN to win the overtime pay for the Nikomas workers, said the case was proof that change was possible.

He said that rather than take their grievances to the local authorities or the central government, the workers took the issue “to Nike and to the media.” Keady suggested other disgruntled workers take a similar approach.

Such a cause, though, must have facts and data behind it, he said. In the Nikomas case, he said, the facts were that thousands of workers were forced work after clocking out, without pay, for several extra hours each day, just to meet production targets.

The task, Keady said, was to prove to employers that this injustice was happening.

Whether such an approach would work with smaller companies or those producing goods for local firms is something he is not prepared to vouch for.

However, he said it was absolutely worth trying for, adding that he hoped the Nikomas victory would empower other workers to stand up and fight for what was theirs.