Legal Protection of Telecommunications Service Workers from the Perspective of Progressive Legal Theory: An Analysis of Outsourcing Implementation and Substantive Justice in Indonesia
Abstract
The telecommunications industry is a strategic sector that plays a vital role in supporting Indonesia's digital transformation and national economic development. Behind the rapid expansion of telecommunications infrastructure, most telecommunications service workers are employed through multilayered outsourcing arrangements involving telecommunications operators, vendors, and subvendors, giving rise to legal issues concerning employment certainty, occupational safety and health, employment social security, and the allocation of legal responsibility. This study aims to analyze the effectiveness of legal protection for telecommunications service workers under Indonesia's positive legal framework from the perspective of Satjipto Rahardjo's Progressive Legal Theory and to formulate a reconstructed legal protection model that better reflects the characteristics of employment relationships in the telecommunications sector. This research employs normative legal research using statutory, conceptual, and philosophical approaches. The novelty of this study lies in reconstructing a legal protection model based on the concept of joint responsibility, which allocates legal responsibility among telecommunications operators, vendors, and subvendors according to the principle of substantive control, rather than solely on formal contractual relationships. The findings reveal that the principal weakness of the existing legal protection framework lies not in the inadequacy of statutory regulations but in the ineffective implementation of legal protection within multilayered employment arrangements, resulting in an accountability gap between the party exercising substantive control over the work and the party formally bearing legal responsibility. Accordingly, the study proposes strengthening the principle of joint responsibility, enhancing occupational safety and health standards, optimizing employment social security coverage, reinforcing labor inspection mechanisms, and establishing sector-specific regulations for telecommunications service workers to ensure greater legal certainty and substantive justice.
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