Journalists Rarely Report Problematic Employers, Sindikadi: Unite to Get Rights

Illustration of a protest by journalist workers. (ANTARA)

JAKARTA - The Media and Creative Industry Workers Association for Democracy (Syndicate) revealed that workers in the creative industry and journalists have a high risk of their work, even becoming victims of negligence such as not getting the right to social security protection.

"The problem is, creative workers and journalists have unclear working hours, so they are vulnerable to their health," said the National Board of Directors of the Mia Rosmiati Syndicate in Makassar, South Sulawesi, Friday, quoted by Antara.

According to him, during the Syndicate, various issues related to the guarantee of protection of the welfare of creative workers and media workers, in this case journalists, were revealed. However, the obstacle is that the employer is not cooperative.

Another obstacle, continued Mia, is that not all creative workers, including journalists, report the problems they experience, let alone protest to their employers. The reason is the risk of being fired because they are too demanding. In fact, encouraging the realization of workers' rights is protected by law and employers will not be able to just argue about the problem.

"That's why we encourage workers to join the union so that they can get their rights. So far, the Syndicate continues to build workers' awareness to join the union and campaign to all creative workers together with union organizations and civil society," said Mia.

The same thing was conveyed by the Chairman of the Makassar Independent Journalists Association (AJI) Sahrul Ramadan at the public discussion 'Reorganizing the Workers' Movement to Face Changes in the World of Work'. From the AJI record there are 89 cases of violence, intimidation of journalists in Indonesia, 23 cases of which are in South Sulawesi.

Arul, who is close to this person, also said that many journalists were not given work contracts, including health and employment protection guarantees from BPJS.

"That's why we are trying to create alternative media, as one way out for journalists to be paid according to the quality of their work. Because, we know together, the wages of journalists in Indonesia are far from the welfare figure," he said.

Therefore, his party has designed the formation of a media workers union to follow up on the problems faced by journalists with various networks. Considering the phenomenon of journalists in the field are vulnerable to threats with high risks, so they need security and health protection from their companies.

Responding to this, the representative of the Makassar Press Legal Assistance Agency (LBH) Sukrianto emphasized that the press company neglected the rights of its workers who were charged with Law number 13 of 2003 concerning Employment, then now undergoing changes to the Job Creation Law (Ciptaker) number 6 of 2023.

Sukrianto said that from the Ciptaker Law, companies cannot escape their responsibility to fulfill workers' rights.

"There is an imbalance between working hours and wages that do not meet the expectations of workers in the creative industry and journalists. Therefore, it is necessary to take joint efforts and steps to make companies aware that art is valuable," he said.