14 - The Industrial Relations Court

Summary

In 2004, Indonesia’s Industrial Relations Court was established as a special court within the scope of the general courts. It has seen major challenges to its operations from the beginning. These challenges include ongoing internal problems related to the high levels of corruption within the Indonesian judicial system; the problems related to technical competence and legal integrity of career judges, ad hoc judges and registrars; and external problems including the workers’ lack of competence in civil litigation procedures and thus access to the court’s litigation processes. Together these problems have led to declining public confidence in the performance of the Court; a situation which has a greater adverse effect on employees and trade unions than on employers. The Court needs to be reformed, for example, by turning it into an autonomous special court, a recommendation that has been put forward by several ad hoc judges from union circles. Such progressive reforms, however, would require strong political commitment both from the judiciary and government; both of which appear currently to be mired in the past.