Towards a Hybrid Employment Model for Indonesia’s Maritime Gig Workforce:Legal Gaps and Global Best Practices
Keywords:
maritime gig workforce hybrid employment labour law social securityAbstract
The gig work phenomenon in Indonesia's maritime sector presents significant labour law challenges. Seasonal fishermen, on-demand dockworkers, marine tourism workers, short-term contract sailors, and maritime digital platform workers operate outside the framework of formal employment relationships as stipulated in the Manpower Act. They do not meet the classic elements of employment, wages, and orders, making legal protection and social security difficult to achieve. As a result, this group of workers is vulnerable to economic exploitation, workplace accidents, and income uncertainty. The weakness of voluntary social protection schemes and limited labour supervision in the maritime sector exacerbates these problems.
This article uses a normative juridical method with a comparative approach. The analysis examines Indonesia's existing labour law framework against international best practices, particularly the EU Directive on Platform Work, which introduces the principle of presumption of employment, and Japan's freelance protected worker model, which provides basic protection without converting workers to full-time employees. Other maritime countries, such as Norway and Denmark, are also compared, having successfully integrated seasonal fisheries workers into social protection regimes.
The research findings indicate that Indonesian labour law is not yet fully prepared to regulate maritime gig work, but it has the potential to transition to a hybrid employment model. Legal reforms are needed through: (1) recognizing a new category of workers in the form of "hybrid workers" or "protected independent workers"; (2) expanding the definition of employment relationships to include economic control and income dependence; (3) minimum social protection obligations involving the roles of the state, companies/platforms, and workers; and (4) integrating labour regulations with maritime law and digital platforms. With these adjustments, Indonesia can create a more adaptive labour law system, protecting gig workers in the maritime sector without sacrificing work flexibility.
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