Nabiyla Risfa Izzati – 2026 could be decisive for workers in Indonesia. This is because revision of Law 13 of 2003 on the Workforce (often translated as 'Manpower Law') was included in the National Legislative Programme (Prolegnas) at the end of 2025, and it is likely to be enacted this year.
The main impetus for this revision is Constitutional Court Decision 168/PUU-XXI/2023, which ordered lawmakers to revise the Workforce Law within two years. When this happens, the partial revisions to the Workforce Law made by the various versions of the Job Creation Law (also known as the Omnibus Law) will be changed yet again, as the Constitutional Court Decision also called for the Workforce Law to be separated entirely from the Omnibus Law.
The outcome of these latest revisions will determine the future direction of labour protection in Indonesia: will the state revise the law to support workers' need for labour protection, or will it once again treat workers as expendable variables in the name of market flexibility and investment interests?
The need for substantive revision
While the Constitutional Court Decision provided the rationale for revising the law, the revisions should not stop at merely fulfilling the Constitutional Court's mandate. The problems workers face are much greater than that.
Labour issues in Indonesia are structural. Wages that fail to guarantee a decent standard of living, job insecurity caused by repeated short-term contracts, and outsourcing practices that strip workers of employment security are some of the long-standing problems under the current Workforce Law.
Without substantive changes that address these basic problems, any revision of the law will fail to deliver meaningful improvements to workers' welfare.
A concrete example is the latest wage policy, issued at the end of 2025 (Government Regulation 49 of 2025), which serves as the basis for calculating the 2026 minimum wage. Although the minimum wage formula set out in this regulation is an improvement on previous policies, its implementation has nonetheless resulted in minimum wages remaining below the Decent Living Needs threshold in many region in Indonesia. Data shows that only five provinces have a minimum wage above the minimum living wage for their region.
This shows that fixing the wage issue is not merely a technical matter of changing the formulas, but a question of the government's political courage and willingness to treat wages as part of the human right to a decent life guaranteed by Article 27 of the Constitution.
Protecting gig workers and freelancers
One of the fundamental problems of the Workforce Law is its narrow definition of employment relationships.
Indonesian labour law has long struggled to keep pace with the rapidly evolving world of work. While working realities have changed significantly, the labour norms set out in the Law have remained largely unchanged.
A glaring example is the definition of an employment relationship in the Article 1(15) of the Workforce Law, which is confined to formal arrangements under an employment agreement that involves work, wages, and command. As a result, many contemporary working relationships are not recognised as employment relationships and are not protected by Indonesian labour laws.
Gig workers, platform workers, and freelancers are among the types of workers who fall outside this narrow definition and are therefore placed in ambiguous (and often exploitative) 'partnership' arrangements. Millions of such workers are consequently relegated to a legal no-man's land: they exist and work, yet are not recognised as parties entitled to legal protection.
This means rights to a decent wage, social security, occupational safety and health, and dispute resolution mechanisms are not rights they can claim as a matter of law. When the state does respond to their demands – for example, through circular letters on religious holiday allowances (tunjangan hari raya, or THR) for platform workers issued in 2025 – these responses are temporary and difficult to enforce because they lack a formally binding legal foundation.
This explains why domestic workers and other informal workers remain unprotected by the Workforce Law to this day. Because employment relationships under Indonesian labour law are confined to formal, company-based arrangements, workers employed by individual employers are forced to seek protection under separate legislation. An example is the draft law on the protection of domestic workers, which they are now advocating for.
For these reasons, revising the Workforce Law should be an opportunity to redefine employment relationships more broadly. The state must recognise that work no longer always takes the form of formal contracts, fixed working hours, and direct supervision.
Legal protection must follow the realities of work, rather than forcing those realities to conform to outdated legal definitions, or leaving workers to be ignored.
Weak political representation of the working class
The greatest challenge, however, lies not only in the design of legal norms, but in the configuration of political power itself.
Political representation of the working class in Indonesia's national legislature (the DPR) remains weak, with the majority of legislators hailing from business backgrounds. In fact, the Indonesian Labour Party (Partai Buruh) failed to secure any DPR representation at all in the 2024 elections.
This political context creates a significant risk that the Workforce Law revision process will once again be dominated by state and capital interests. In such circumstances, workers' concerns risk being relegated to mere footnotes.
The only way to prevent this outcome is to consolidate working-class power. This must not be limited to conventional trade unions in sectors such as manufacturing, but must extend to gig worker unions, freelancer unions, campus worker unions, and other non-conventional worker organisations. Only through inclusive, cross-sectoral solidarity can workers' interests be effectively advanced and protected from being marginalised once again in public policymaking.
At the same time, the public must continue to remind the DPR and the government not to repeat the mistakes made during the drafting of the Job Creation Law, which resulted in labour legislation that undermined worker protections. The rushed lawmaking process, which the Constitutional Court found lacked transparency and meaningful participation, should not be allowed to happen again.
The year 2026 is a critical moment for the state to demonstrate where it truly stands. The widespread and prolonged rejection of the Job Creation Law, which significantly weakened the foundations of labour law, should serve as a vital lesson that must not be repeated in the ongoing revision of the Workforce Law.
The state must move beyond a narrow focus on investment interests and ensure genuine protection for all workers as a concrete expression of social justice for all the people of Indonesia.