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NEWSLETTER 13, NOVEMBER 2000 Labour Rights in Indonesia: What is Menstruation Leave?

To create more solidarity between people in the developed world and Nike workers in Indonesia, U.S. anti-sweatshop activists Jim Keady and Leslie Kretzu, adopted the lifestyle, diet, customs and culture of Indonesian factory workers and lived on their prevailing wages ($1 a day) for approximately two months (Aug.-Sept. 2000). Though they didn't take up factory work, they did interview workers and publicized daily reports (see http://www.nikewages.org) on what they learned, in order to draw attention to the lived economic realities of the factory workers. The following is a report written by Kretzu on the important and often misunderstood issue of menstruation leave, which is guaranteed by Indonesian

September 8, 2000 -- Tim Connor from NikeWatch spent March and April of 2000 conducting research in Indonesia. In his report, "Like Cutting Bamboo" [www.caa.org.au/campaigns/nike/association/], he cites evidence of intimidating and humiliating physical examinations that women working in Nike factories are routinely put through in order to claim the menstrual leave to which they are legally entitled. He asked if I could explore this issue in more depth during our stay in Tangerang. What I discovered was absolutely appalling.

Indonesian law states that every woman is entitled to two days unpaid menstrual leave per month. Anticipating that some might ask, "How can these women justify taking two days off from work simply because they are menstruating?" I posed the question to several female and male workers, labor organizers, and student activists. The consensus was that the menstrual leave legislation wasn't necessarily drafted for women with office jobs or other positions that are not physically demanding. The two optional menstrual leave days are believed to be aimed at the tens of thousands of factory workers who cannot freely go to the restroom throughout the day, cannot afford pads and pain medication, have mandatory overtime, and work 10-15 hour days on a regular basis, sometimes standing for the duration, just to survive.

The procedure to take menstrual leave in Nike's subcontracted factories is plagued with a degree of fear and humiliation that is so severe; most women would rather suffer than take the days off. The reality of the situation is as follows. First, the worker approaches her line chief. If the line chief gives permission, she can approach the foreman. If the foreman gives permission, she can approach the management. After making her way through this management hierarchy, the worker must go to the factory clinic and prove that she is menstruating. She must do this by pulling down her pants and showing blood to the clinic staff. She cannot take the menstrual leave that she is entitled to by law without going through this degrading process. As you can imagine, not many workers ask for the days off. With workers not taking days off, the assembly line is fully staffed, quotas are reached more quickly, and the factory provides for its contractor most efficiently.

This intrusive procedure of proving one is menstruating does not happen every month for every worker, but it does happen. Several of the women workers we interviewed, as well as the organizers we spoke with said it does not happen more frequently because the workers are too scared to even ask to go to the clinic.

"Like Cutting Bamboo" quotes a worker from Nike's PT Nikomas Gemilang factory saying, "The workers can't just leave like that, they have to go to the clinic and get proof…If they don't prove, they can't take [leave]." The same worker spoke of how the pressure to achieve work deadlines translates into workers being unable to take the menstrual leave they are guaranteed by Indonesian law. "Some workers are [also] afraid to take leave because they have to achieve the target and if they don't achieve the target the supervisor will get mad. A woman who takes menstruation leave will be hated by the supervisor. Very few workers take it."

Not only are the female factory workers intimidated in asking for the menstrual leave days they are entitled to, but most women are even afraid to ask to go to the bathroom. There is pressure to meet quotas and fear to not "get on the bad side" of your supervisor. The majority of workers know that simply asking permission to use the bathroom will usually result in their supervisor yelling at them even more. Some insults that workers reported were shouted at them include "bitch", "cow", or "pig" and sarcastic statements like "Why don't you just go back to your village?" This intimidating humiliation combined with the workers' apprehension, commonly results in women bleeding through their clothes every month.

Tens of thousands of women go to work knowing they are going to bleed through their clothes for the first two days of their period every single month. For those two days, they will wear dark pants and a long blouse so the stain on their clothes is less noticeable when they walk home from the factory. Some women said that despite wearing two pads because of the long hours in between bathroom breaks, they still bleed through their clothes.

Nike workers have only 2 bathroom breaks per day. The ratio of toilets to workers varies not only from factory to factory, but between sections within the same factory. In one factory we researched there were five toilets for 2000 workers, six toilets for 500 workers, nine toilets for 1000 workers, and three toilets (two of which were broken) for 350 workers. Workers in that factory also said there is always a line for the bathroom, and there is never enough clean water for the toilets. A shortage of clean water with regards to an Asian toilet is tantamount in the Western world to a toilet that doesn't flush properly, lacks toilet paper, and lacks running water to appropriately wash one's hands.

Union organizers and Indonesian student activists told us that it's not only in Nike factories where these conditions exist, but also in factories producing apparel for the Gap, Old Navy, Tommy Hilfiger, Adidas, Fila, Reebok, and Polo to name a few.

One Adidas factory worker we interviewed told a story that happened to her recently. She began menstruating at work and had not brought any feminine supplies with her. She asked her supervisor if she could go to the bathroom. He denied her request and yelled at her to keep working. She asked two other times, and each time her supervisor ignored her request. Three hours later, when she had bled through her clothes onto her chair, her supervisor approached her, threw an unwrapped pad onto her workstation, and in front of all her co-workers, sarcastically said, "You can go to the bathroom now if you need to."

Another worker was asked to pull down her pants and show that she had blood on the pad in order to be sent home for menstrual leave. When she told the clinic "nurse" that it is against her religion to expose these parts of her body, the nurse replied she would not be allowed to take the menstrual leave unless she proved she was menstruating. She had just gone to the bathroom before going to the clinic and therefore, there was no blood on the pad. The clinic nurse called her a liar, and told her to go back to work. The next morning she returned to the clinic to show the nurse she was menstruating. She said she was not there to take menstrual leave, but instead to prove she was not a liar.

During the month we spent in Tangerang, I became close with a number of female factory workers, but I did not learn of this egregious violation until soon before we left. It is never mentioned. With one group of women, it took a good half hour of encouragement and asking all the men to leave the room, before they felt it even possible to talk about this issue. Even then, they were embarrassed and ashamed. Some said they felt it was their fault and rationalized the situation by saying it occurred because they are labor organizers or because they are women. Though they knew that they needed to talk about this in order for change to come about.

This degrading treatment violates human dignity on many levels. It is a blatant breach of Articles 5, 7, 18 and 23 of the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is also in violation of the UN's Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Nike's labor practices, cultivated in an environment of fear and domination arguably constitute abuse and amount to violence against women.