Asian Labour Review

A Critical History of Strikes in India On 9 July 2025, India witnessed one of the largest general strikes in world history. A Bharat Bandh ("nationwide shutdown") was called by a joint platform of ten central trade unions, allied farmers' ...

On 9 July, India witnessed one of the largest general strikes in world history, called by a joint platform of ten central trade unions, allied farmers’ groups, and student organisations, a watershed moment that reaffirmed the power of collective action. labourreview.org/history-of-s...

Asian Labour School for workers, organisers and students

Asian Labour School is open for registration for the Oct-Dec 2025 semester, featuring four courses: Labour, Power and Strategies, Writing Worker Stories: Movement-Centered Labour Journalism, Labour’s Polycrisis & Worker Cooperatives: Can Cooperating Transform How We Work Together? labourschool.org

See some of you in Tokyo soon!

A Festival of East Asia Labour Movements Editor's Note: How do we create an open space for meeting, learning, reflection, exchange and joy in cross-border labour movement solidarity building? Over the past ten months, an international organi...

How do we create an open space for meeting, learning, reflection, exchange and joy in cross-border labour movement solidarity building? Over the past ten months, an international organising committee came together and created the East Asia LaborFest.

labourreview.org/a-festival-o...

Recognition as Power The question of recognition is foundational. Organising power comes not only from protests or petitions but also from forcing institutions to acknowledge riders as workers.

labourreview.org/recognition-...

Resistance is Possible: Lives of Grab Workers in Indonesia Some analysts of the platform-based gig economy have argued that the potential of gig workers to resist their exploitation is low. I want to show the opposite: it is not only possible to organise driv...

labourreview.org/grab-in-indo...

Crisis of Social Reproduction under Platform Capitalism The rise of digital platforms has both extended the realm of social reproduction and disrupted its processes. Social reproduction consists of labour in creating and maintaining capitalism’s most valua...

labourreview.org/crisis-of-so...

Polarisation and the Search for Unity in Indonesian Labour Movement On the eve of Labour Day 2025 in Jakarta, a WhatsApp message from a friend posed a deceptively simple question: "Are you attending the demonstration at Monas (National Monument) or DPR (the House of R...

labourreview.org/polarisation...

To understand the uprising and crisis in Indonesia, here is our selection of articles from ALR: labourreview.org/indonesias-u...

Labour’s Polycrisis A concept that takes on a life of its own often says a lot about the material conditions and structure of feeling of the time. Polycrisis, recently re-popularised by the historian Adam Tooze, was firs...

Kevin Lin, editor of @asianlabour.bsky.social, has published a synoptic reflection of the labor movement in East and Southeast Asia, based on years of inquiry and engagement. It is rare to find such a synthetic overview and insight:

labourreview.org/labours-poly...

Yes, they are selling apartments.

Reimagining Labour Power in the Digital Society Where labour once found relative cohesion in large factories or traditional offices, the rise of digital and platform-based labour adds further fragmentation, governed by inscrutable algorithms and hi...

labourreview.org/reimagining-...

Against the Platform In merely a decade, the rise of platforms in Asia has profoundly transformed the lives of millions of workers.

labourreview.org/against-the-...

Regime of Temporary Migrant Labour and Racialised Capitalism in Taiwan Taiwan’s regime of temporary migrant labour was formalised as a kind of “guest worker” program in 1992, and it has been an important column of Taiwan’s racialised capitalism since

labourreview.org/taiwans-regi...

Spotted in Bangkok

Our Shared Struggles: An East Asia Labor Exhibition & Exchange SAVE THE DATE Our Shared Struggles An East Asia Labor Exhibition & Exchange October 3-11, 2025 Tokyo, Japan at Sophia University How are our labor struggles in East Asia connected by our histories? To...

How are our labor struggles in East Asia connected by our histories? To what extent do we – in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan – share similar aspirations and goals? How should we reflect on our experiences of labor organizing and movement building?
labourreview.org/our-shared-s...

Creating Cracks as Movement Building In this extended interview, Kim Ji-su, the president of the South Korean Rider Union, reflects on how real change often begins in the cracks—among the most precarious, the most excluded, and the most ...

Kim Ji-su, the president of the South Korean Rider Union, reflects on how real change often begins in the cracks—among the most precarious, the most excluded, and the most committed to building something new.

labourreview.org/cracks/

Kevin and Kiang launch a new series of the @asianlabour.bsky.social Review's Continent of Resistance #podcast that examines the wave of labor strikes across Asia in the late 2000s and early 2010s at

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#1u #UnionStrong #LaborRadioPod

Deep Organising is the Path Forward In much of Asia, gig work is highly individualised, and algorithmic management fragments the labour process, diminishing workers' structural power. Couriers and riders often work gruelling hours, driv...

labourreview.org/deep-organis...