Fairwork - Turning Promises into Policy: What Indonesia’s New Administration Could Mean for Platform Workers
By Revin Muhammad Alsidais, Adriansyah Dhani Darmawan, and Nur Huda, Fairwork Indonesia
On October 20th 2024, Prabowo Subianto was officially inaugurated as the eighth President of Indonesia. In his campaign platform, President Subianto pledged to provide “legal clarity” for workers partnering with app-based companies and promised—from the stage at one of his rallies—to improve platform drivers’ well-being and quality of life. While these remain campaign promises for now, the new President’s commitments suggest that the next five years could be monumental for establishing a much-needed governance system for platform-based work in Indonesia, which will have implications for the well-being of millions of workers.
What’s at Stake? The State of Platform Work in Indonesia
At the 2024 plenary session with the Indonesian House of Representatives, Indonesia’s Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati reflected on her tenure during 10 years of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s administration. During that speech, she celebrated the more than 11 million jobs created in the country’s economy over the past three years. Indrawati specifically cited Gojek, an Indonesian ride-hailing platform, as an example of the digital sector’s important role in generating new job opportunities. While the Minister is right that the volume of jobs created by platforms like Gojek is laudable, Fairwork research conducted on the Indonesian platform economy since 2021 suggests the quality of these jobs may be less than satisfactory when it comes to wages, job security, and labour protections.
Indonesia has a large, relatively young, and growing workforce, which the economy has struggled to accommodate in recent years. This is in part due to the waves of layoffs driven by the pandemic, the global economic downturn and the country’s premature deindustrialisation, which have reduced opportunities in the formal sector. As a result, many workers are entering the platform economy.
Based on national statistics, researchers Permana, Izzati, & Askar (2023) estimated that there were somewhere between 430,000 and 2.3 million platform workers in Indonesia as of 2019. This represents between 0.3-1.7 percent of the total workforce. However, given the significant growth in digital platform work since 2019, this number is most likely now a vast underestimation. GARDA, a local driver association, estimated in 2020 that Indonesia was home to 4 million two-wheeler drivers drivers alone. By the end of 2023, Gojek reported having 3.1 million drivers on their app, a threefold increase since 2019.
Unfortunately, demand for platform work has not kept pace with the immense growth of the digital labour force, meaning competition has intensified and incomes have declined for platform workers in many sectors, including ride-hailing. Fairwork research shows, that in recent years, ride-hailing drivers are spending more time waiting for jobs than completing them and are working long hours and juggling multiple platforms to make ends meet. Today, some workers struggle to get even five jobs a day, compared to the five to ten jobs they used to secure regularly. A 2023 survey by IDEAS of platform drivers in Greater Jakarta revealed that 68.9 percent of drivers exceed 8 hours daily and 79.6 percent work 6–7 days a week. Alarmingly, this issue spans across platforms, as none of the ten platforms Fairwork rated in Indonesia last year managed to score even half of the possible points on its five principles of decent work.
In less competitive labour markets, such conditions might encourage workers to pursue alternative opportunities; however, though many in Indonesia enter the platform economy thinking of it as a temporary employment solution, the interviews conducted by Fairwork researchers have revealed that many workers feel stuck in the platform economy with no clear exit strategy. This is exacerbated when workers have also made substantial investments in the materials needed for platform work, such as mobile phones and motorbikes.
While the Indonesian government recognises the importance of platform work as a key employment provider and acknowledges its economic contribution—according to a 2023 study by the University of Indonesia study, GoTo, Gojek’s parent company, accounts for 2.2 percent of the nation’s GDP—there is still a lack of effective regulation. Despite the sector’s growth, the government has yet to implement a comprehensive system to protect workers and ensure the sustainability of platform work, leaving workers vulnerable to precarious conditions without adequate legal safeguards.
New Administration, New Regulation
Given the campaign promises made by Indonesia’s new president, it seems likely that platform workers in the country will soon benefit from stronger regulatory protections. Although some legislative initiatives are already underway, the exact shape that this new regulation will take is still unclear. In October 2024, The Jakarta Post reported that under the previous administration, the Ministry of Manpower was working on a ministerial regulation to guarantee platform drivers’ rights, including access to health and employment insurance. This approach was chosen because ministerial regulations are generally quicker to develop compared to legislative changes. Work on the regulation began in May and is expected to be completed by December 2024.
In early November 2024, the Constitutional Court of Indonesia granted a judicial review petition from labour unions challenging the labour regulation section of the controversial 2022 Omnibus Law on Job Creation. This law, originally designed to streamline regulations and attract investment, faced significant backlash for weakening worker protections and reducing job security. The court ordered the government to draft a new, separate labour law, within a maximum of two years from the date the ruling was issued. The 2022 Omnibus Law will be declared permanently unconstitutional if the government fails to make these revisions within the specified timeframe. This ruling not only pushes the government to address broader labour concerns but also provides a further opportunity to incorporate governance for platform-based work into Indonesia’s legal framework.
The new government should learn from attempts to regulate platform work in other jurisdictions such as Singapore and the European Union, as they offer valuable lessons for balancing innovation with worker protection. In Singapore’s Platform Worker Bill, platform workers are to be designated as a distinct legal category between employees and the self-employed. This regulation ensures that platform workers can receive a similar level of insurance and injury compensation as traditional employees while also giving them the right to form representative bodies called platform work associations. Meanwhile, the EU Platform Work Directive enables the reclassification of platform workers as employees (under specific criteria to be defined by Member States) unless platforms can prove that the contractual relationship is not an employment relationship. The Directive also regulates algorithmic management and data protection, ensuring that human oversight is involved in decision-making and that personal data are not exploited.
These approaches represent two different options for Indonesia to regulate platform work and protect platform workers. The Singaporean model balances flexibility and protection by creating a distinct worker category, offering key benefits without granting full employee rights. In contrast, the EU’s reclassification approach provides stronger protections but may face pushback from platforms due to higher costs and increased responsibilities. Indonesia should aim for a middle ground, ensuring worker protections while preserving the flexibility essential for its platform economy.
Whatever route the new government chooses, any new regulation of platform work must go beyond merely providing workers with clear legal status and include robust protection standards that ensure fair rights and responsibilities for both workers and platforms. This entails adhering to the principles of Fair Pay, Fair Conditions, Fair Contracts, Fair Management, and Fair Representation. Furthermore, the regulation must be cross-sectoral, acknowledging that platform work encompasses not only ride-hailing drivers but also delivery services, cleaning services, and various other industries. A comprehensive and inclusive strategy will be crucial for promoting the sustainability and fairness of Indonesia’s platform work ecosystem for many years ahead.
The next round of ratings from Fairwork Indonesia will be published soon, so stay tuned to Fairwork’s social media channels for the latest updates. You can find us on X/Twitter, BlueSky, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.