A look at Jakarta's “base camps”, informal meeting points that let Gojek drivers organize for better working conditions, including health insurance and sick pay
MIT Technology Review : Tweets: @_karenhao , @techreview , @zuckerbergmeta , @mario_gug , and @pulitzercenter Tweets: @_karenhao : In part three of @techreview's AI Colonialism series, we head to Indonesia, where a strong sense of community has protected ride-hailing drivers from the unforgiving nature of algorithmic management. A playbook of resistance for gig workers globally. https://www.technologyreview.com/ ... @techreview : In Jakarta, ride-hailing giant Gojek's fleet of motorbike taxi drivers are building worker power through worker community. https://www.technologyreview.com/ ... @zuckerbergmeta : i think we'll be seeing the term ‘decoloniality’ a lot more in coming days @jsaideepak This story is part three of MIT Technology Review's series on AI colonialism, the idea that artificial intelligence is creating a new colonial world order. https://www.technologyreview.com/ ... Mario Guglielmetti / @mario_gug : “The technology has become an instrument for this labor exploitation.” #platformwork #futureofwork Please follow the whole MIT series on AI as digital colonialism, if you have time. I think this is the 3rd out of 4 articles. https://www.technologyreview.com/ ... @pulitzercenter : Jakarta's base camps allow drivers for Gojek, Indonesia's largest ride-hailing firm, to rest and recharge between gigs. These informal meeting points allow drivers to communicate and organize for better working conditions. @_KarenHao for @techreview. https://www.technologyreview.com/ ... https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Gojek's Jakarta base camps are the physical counterpart to a pattern documented since at least 2018, when ride-hail drivers in the US used online forums to compare notes and push back at employers — only here the coordination point is a street corner rather than a message board, and the demands are health insurance and sick pay rather than app workarounds. The article lands amid Indonesia's own regulatory pressure on the platforms: back in 2018 the government required Grab and Go-Jek to register as transportation firms and provide job protections, so driver organizing has a state lever to push against.
The stakes are sharpened by market structure. Ride-hailing economics in Southeast Asia have long been more favorable than in the US, which is why Uber ceded the region to Grab and Go-Jek — and why the repeatedly floated Grab-Gojek merger alarmed labor groups, who feared a consolidated platform would have even less incentive to improve driver conditions. Base camps are the drivers' answer to that consolidation risk: building worker power from below rather than waiting for it from above.
First-order effects
- Gojek now faces an organized driver constituency in its largest market demanding benefits — health insurance and sick pay — that its algorithmic dispatch model does not provide, and the base camps give drivers a coordination point the app cannot switch off.
Second-order effects
- Any revival of the Grab-Gojek merger talks runs into a workforce that has already organized, strengthening the labor groups who opposed the deal and raising the price of consolidation; Indonesia's job-protection registration requirements gain a grassroots enforcement mechanism alongside the state one.
Third-order effects
- If the playbook travels, gig-worker power shifts from scattered online forums to durable physical infrastructure — meeting points that survive platform retaliation and deactivation — forcing platforms in Southeast Asia and beyond to treat driver benefits as a cost of operating rather than a concession.
The trend: Gig workers are moving from ephemeral online coordination to permanent physical organizing structures, with Southeast Asia's concentrated ride-hailing market as the proving ground.