Chicago Indonesia is a Muslim country. Some estimates say 85% of the population shares the faith. There was not a morning I did not wake up to the call for prayers at 4:15 in the morning. Despite the secular cast of the country, many have asked about the role of women and the level of …
Category: Labor Organizing
The Search for the Informal Workers Organizing Program
Kuala Lumpur 42 days of exile It took going out of country with the Organizers’ Forum to figure out that we were in a global revolution in employment with the informal sector crowding out the formal sector or the workforce. Gradually, we came to understand that part of what we were organizing in the US were …
Tourism Sector Workers
Jakarta 37 days of Exile We had heard that the Independent Federation of Tourism Sector Unions or in Indonesian the Federasi Serikat Pekerja Mandiri (FSPM) was an aggressive, grassroots union operation making strong headway among particularly the internationally branded hotel properties in Jakarta. These folks were so close to the ground though that they did not …