In Reform or Revolution? independent researcher Dan La Botz gives us a personal look at the Indonesian workers who are taking on global corporate giants and igniting a multinational labor solidarity movement.
Through rare personal interviews with Indonesian workers, La Botz describes the inspiring, powerful events that are transforming the world's fourth-largest country. He shows us how workers earning the equivalent of $2 a day are challenging the sweatshop conditions of factories run by U.S.-based multinationals such as Nike and Reebok. Their dynamic new labor movement emerged in Indonesia in the 1990s, helping to bring down the brutal dictatorship of the U.S.-backed General Suharto in May 1998.
When Indonesian workers toured U.S. campuses and trade union halls in 1999 and 2000, a new generation of student activists in the United States was awakened. Reform or Revolution? will be required reading for those activists and for all those interested in building international labor solidarity.
Dan La Botz is a researcher and organizer with Global Exchange and currently lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. He is the author of Mask of Democracy and Democracy in Mexico, both published by South End Press, and Rank-and-File Rebellion. La Botz is the editor of Mexican Labor News and Analysis. His writing appears regularly in Against the Current, Labor Notes, and Z Magazine. He has traveled to Indonesia several times to report on the Indonesian labor movement.