YOGYAKARTA- The monetary crisis around the year 1998 led to dollar increase and fluctuation against rupiahs drastically. Prices of imported goods and services rose rapidly. Among the increases of imported goods are capital goods, raw and auxiliary materials which are input for the industrial sector. One of the industrial sub-sectors that have high import content of raw materials is the chemical industry.
Although the chemical industry became one of the industries affected by the crisis, the nominal wage of chemical industry workers has been tough enough to go down (not going down), except for nominal wage of industrial workers. This was stated by Joko Susanto, SE, M. Si, a lecturer of Faculty of Economics UPN Veteran Yogyakarta when defending his dissertation entitled Rigidity Nominal Wage in Indonesia (Studies in Chemical Industry from 1997 to 2005 period) in the Auditorium BRI 3rd floor of Master of Science and Doctoral Program Faculty of Economics and Business UGM, Monday (9/8).
"My research produced the conclusion that the nominal wage of chemical industry workers is rigid to go down, except the nominal wage of production workers," Joko said in his dissertation.
He added that chemical industry performance time is very influenced by the price of imported raw materials. Increased prices of imported raw materials, resulting from the increase in the dollar against rupiah, resulted in increased production costs. In his dissertation, he mentioned that chemical industry workers consist of production and non-production workers. The non-rigidity of nominal wages of production workers is because the benefits are variable in accordance with worker productivity and company performance.
"The decline of productivity of workers will be followed by a decrease in allowance so that nominal wages of production workers fall down. For non-production workers, the decline in productivity only affected the decrease of variable allowance," said the man born in Sleman, March 2, 1968.
Rigidity of nominal wages to fall is influenced positively by productivity of workers, output price and provincial sectoral minimum wages . Increasing worker productivity, output price and provincial sectoral minimum wages causethe decreased probability of smaller nominal wage. Meanwhile, the ratification of labor union law and the monetary crisis have no effect on nominal wage rigidity.
"This shows the weakness of labor union. In one company, there are more than one labor unions which is difficult to cooperate each other," he explained.
Based on this research, Joko suggested the company to design the wage system so that when the scale of production and worker productivity decrease, the company is not too burdened with the cost of workers' basic wages. Basic wage of production and non-production workers sufficiently is set equally or slightly higher than the provincial sectoral minimum wages and the need for decent living ).
"When productivity of workers decreases, variable allowance also decreases. Therefore, the company can determine the wage scheme by giving greater weight to the variable allowance," the lecturer of Faculty Economics of UPN Yogyakarta emphasized.
In his doctoral open exam, Joko Susanto successfully graduated with satisfactory result. Meanwhile, his promoter was Prof. Dr. Nopirin, co-promoter were Dr.Budiono Sri Handoko, M.A., and Dr.Bagus Santoso, M. Soc., Sc. Meanwhile, the examiners were Prof.Dr Iswardono S. Permono, M.A., Dr. Soeratno, M. Ec, Dr. Samsubar Saleh, M.Soc.Sc, and Dr.Faried Wijaya, MA.