Unveiling the Dynamics: AASB’s Million People Power Movement and the Struggle Against Legislative Reforms
Demonstration agenda of the Alliance of One Million Workers’ Actions (AASB) on August 10, 2023. If the intention of AASB to repeal the Job Creation Law (UU 6/2023) is rejected by President Joko Widodo, then AASB will resort to a sit-in demonstration.
A million people power sitting down until the president repeals UU 6/2023. Also, repealing the Health Law, Financial Law P2SK, and implementing Universal Social Security for Lifelong Coverage.
AASB employs a dual approach, including the formal review of UU 6/2023 at the Constitutional Court (MK), but it seems to emphasize the people power sit-in agenda as a final pressure step against the Joko Widodo administration, beyond the impeachment agenda.
There is a resemblance to the petition agenda of 100, which demands impeachment. It’s also similar to the initiation of people power, although the desire to initiate people power still emerges and fades.
As a coalition organization, AASB’s demands are dynamically evolving. They vary based on the speaker who gets the opportunity to speak. Each speaker has different agendas, even though the final agenda has been explicitly stated verbally as mentioned above.
In the recent developments, firstly, AASB rejected integration with the long march demonstration by the Labor Party. The orange-symbol party, which strives hard to surpass the parliamentary threshold using the momentum of repealing UU 6/2023, in order to increase the vote count for the February 2024 legislative elections.
Secondly, AASB greatly hopes for support from workers, students, and the public to multiply the participants in the Bandung to Jakarta long march, which currently seems to involve around a hundred pedestrians and is aimed to be increased to a million.
AASB expects assistance from workers in Jakarta, West Java, and Banten. Additionally, demonstrators from several provinces in Central Java, East Java, Lampung, South Sumatra, North Sumatra, South Sulawesi, and labor demonstrations in their respective places of origin across Indonesia will join.
Thirdly, AASB disassociates itself from political parties, even though the historical development of AASB coordinators being closely associated with the largest political party, volunteers of the 2014 presidential election winner, and so forth, can be easily traced.
In short, the AASB movement explains the dynamics of the fire of conflict within the remnants among supporters and former supporters of the presidential election winner.
Fourthly, the main issue that actually arises is not from the formal text stated in UU 11/2020 Job Creation, Presidential Regulation 2/2022 Job Creation, and UU 6/2023, along with other laws, but primarily concerns the BPJS (Workers’ Social Security Agency).
BPJS Employment is calculated from the start of membership fee payment, which has significantly impacted the small comparison of expectations regarding severance pay and employment termination benefits.
MK Decision 91/PUU-XIII/2020 regarding the formal review has amplified the elevation of resistance above. Supported by interpreters who attribute all the world’s discrepancies to the Ciptaker Law as the cause