Pancasila Industrial Relations No More? Ideological Influences on Indonesian Industrial Relations in the Post-Suharto Period
Michael Ford (School of Political and International Studies Flinders University)
Suharto’s New Order regime invested considerable energy in developing a system of industrial relations that was ideologically driven by Pancasila, the state philosophy. According to the New Order, this system was an indigenous response to industrial relations, which totally rejected the assumptions of class conflict inherent in foreign models (both socialist and liberal).
Although the rhetoric of Pancasila Industrial Relations survived for a period after Suharto’s resignation in May 1998, the institutional pillars of the system were quickly dismantled, as Suharto’s successors bowed to international and domestic pressures for change. This paper examines the ideological continuities and disjuctures between Pancasila Industrial Relations and Indonesia’s current system, and their implications for practice. It argues that, like Pancasila Industrial Relations itself, the changes in industrial relations practice in the post-Suharto period are the result of a re-balancing of ideological influences rather than a complete break with the past.
