140 Years After May Day: Workers Win Battles, Lose the War

We celebrate the victory of 1886 while quietly surrendering everything fought for through smartphone apps, two-page contracts, and words that sound like freedom. On 1 May 2026, millions of Indonesians will send “Happy Labour Day” greetings. Most via instant messaging apps delivered to their phones by a courier who receives no holiday allowance. The message is sent over an internet network maintained by contract technicians without pension guarantees. Then read while ordering coffee from a shop whose part-time cashier works that way so the owner avoids social security contribution obligations. A symphony of hypocrisy so perfect it almost feels like performance art. But let’s not be too hard on ourselves. And on the 140th anniversary of the May Day movement born from blood in Chicago’s Haymarket Square, it’s time to ask honestly: what are we actually celebrating? “Exploitation hasn’t disappeared. It just changed costumes, and the new one is far more expensive than the old.” There is a historical concept called the enclosure movement, the long process of privatising communal land in England from the 15th to the 19th century. This process turned millions of free peasants into wage labourers who had nothing but their labour. Historians call it one of the most brutal structural transformations in Western history. Not done with open violence, but with laws, ownership certificates, and documents that appear legitimate. Land that was once communal suddenly became someone’s property, and those who once lived off it now had to sell their labour to survive. What is happening today is its digital version. We call it the gig economy. We call it platforms. We call it “partners”, not employees. An euphemism so elastic it can stretch the reality of a driver working 12 hours a day into the image of a free entrepreneur enjoying life’s flexibility. BPS recorded in November 2025 that 85.35 million Indonesian workers, or 57.70 percent of the total workforce, are in the informal sector. The time, labour, and data of millions of them are fenced by algorithms, then resold to the public in the form of “affordable services”. 21st-century slavery arrives without chains, only with five-star ratings and threats of account deactivation.