Labor Law and Legislation in the Netherlands Indies

Abstract

A S IN the world at large, so in the Netherlands Indies, labor law as such 21 is a relatively modern development. Within the last score of years the legislative arm of the Indies government has attempted to satisfy the labor demands of an ever-expanding agricultural, commercial and industrial economy, protecting at the same time the conflicting interests of the diverse elements of the population. The result has been a growth from simple contract law to a complexity of provisions respecting labor relations that were only beginning to be fashioned into a unified whole at the time of the Japanese invasion. The future labor law will undoubtedly be built upon this foundation. Hence an exposition of the recent past should prove the best approach to postwar needs in the field of labor. The modest beginnings of Indies labor law may be traced back to 1879. In that year the three simple paragraphs of the Civil Code the hire of servants and now known as 1601-03 old, designed to regulate agreements between European employer and employee,' were declared applicable to non-Europeans. The enactment was intended to give more security to the European employers of native workers, but the language was broad enough to make the sections of the Civil Code applicable to labor contracts between non-Europeans; in this respect it remained a dead letter. During the next half century special legislation was enacted to take care of the so-called contract coolie labor and to protect the position of European managers and assistants on large estates, but it was not until 1926 that a