On 1 April 2017, thirteen trade unions, having formed a coalition, signed a “Political Contract” with two candidates in the Jakarta gubernatorial elections. These thirteen unions then gave their support to Anies Baswedan and Sandiaga Uno, candidates nominated by the Partai Keadilan Sejahtera (PKS) and GERINDRA, the party headed by the 2014 presidential candidate, Prabowo Subianto. These unions included the Konfederasi Serikat Pekerja Indonesia (KSPI), Federasi Serikat Pekerja Metal Indonesia (FSPMI), and Serikat Pekerja Nasional (SPN), among others. The KSPI and FSPMI leaderships had been supporting the GERINDRA-PKS coalition since the 2014 presidential elections. Between 2010 and 2013, the KSPI and FPSMI had been the vanguard of a series of annual campaigns for increases in the minimum wage and ending the widespread use of labour hire (called “outsourcing”).

The points included in the Political Contract covered wages, labour hire, housing, public transport, unemployment social insurance, education, the Jakarta Bay reclamation, the status of teachers, health insurance and workers cooperatives. The one point made on wages policy was as follows:

Anies Baswedan and Sandiaga Una won the elections—for many reasons beyond the wages issue—and were sworn in as governor and vice-governor on 16 October 2017. Two weeks later, on 1 November, the new governor signed-off on the minimum wage for 2018. He did not conform to the wages policy point in the Political Contract but determined a wage increase based on Regulation 78/2015, not higher. The new minimum wage was determined as Rp3,648,035, an 8.7 per cent increase on the previous year. The unions were asking for Rp3,917,398.

As a consequence of this decision, the thirteen unions held a press conference and declared that they were withdrawing their support for Anies Baswedan. The president of the KSPI and FSPMI, Said Iqbal, even compared Baswedan unfavourably with former governor and now prisoner Basuki Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, saying that the latter was a more honourable man than Baswedan. During the gubernatorial campaign, Iqbal had been very critical of Purnama on a range of issues, and had merged his unions with major protests that were calling for Purnama to be arrested for humiliating Islam.