5 - Local Executive Races

Summary

This chapter examines Indonesian unions’ involvement in mayoral, district head, and gubernatorial races in our five field sites between 2005 and 2018. It explains how unions negotiated with candidates to secure political contracts, oral and written, promising patronage benefits and prolabor policies in return for votes. As the chapter shows, the content of these political contracts varied, as did the process through which they were reached. In some cases, they were little different from agreements struck with myriad community leaders who encouraged members of their communities to vote for the candidate in return for money or public goods like a new road. In others, the focus was firmly programmatic, emphasizing measures like better enforcement of labor regulations; more regular factory inspections; and affordable healthcare, housing, and transport. There were also enormous differences in the extent to which unions and candidates delivered on these contracts. But, even where they failed, they had the effect of raising the profile of labor issues as political issues and of unions as political actors—so much so that some unions decided to run candidates of their own.