2
preventing exit. Few federations established in Indonesia since 1998 have offered dynamic
alternatives to SPSI, and labor legislation has facilitated the fragmentation of these unions into
dozens of competing federations and thousands of unaffiliated plant-level unions. Thus, part of the
reason SPSI stays ahead is because their opposition is so deeply divided.
Legacy unions
In many authoritarian and communist countries, states created highly regulated forms of labor
relations. Perhaps the most common practice is to sponsor the formation of unions that support the
regime. In some cases, such as the former communist countries in Eastern Europe, state
sponsorship resulted in high levels of unionization (Crowley and Ost 2001). In other cases, such as
Indonesia, state backing was primarily a means of demobilizing labor and preventing the emergence
of a radical working class movement, so unionization rates were low (Hadiz 1997). In spite of these
differences, legacy unions share a reliance on state support—in the form of resources and the
repression of alternative organizations—for sustenance and to channel members to them.
Democratization poses a challenge to legacy unions. With democratization, pressure mounts
both domestically and internationally to respect freedom of association. Although legacy unions lose
their monopoly of representation and it becomes more difficult for the state to favor them, they do
not disappear when the political environment changes. These unions, nourished during
undemocratic eras, are passed along as legacies in the transformed political context. Legacy unions
hold a number of historical and organizational advantages over upstart unions in new democracies.
Most importantly, legacy unions enter the democratic era with more members than other
organizations. In addition, they usually have close relations with civil servants and politicians, have
relatively effective dues collection, control resources such as buildings, and have many years of
experience negotiating with both employers and government officials. Legacy unions enter the
Convention