Working Hours, Leave and Overtime Rights for Foreign Employees in Indonesia

Do Indonesian working-hour rules cover foreign employees?

A job offer that promises a generous salary and “flexible hours” can still leave the most expensive part of the arrangement unanswered: how much time the employer controls, when extra work is authorised, and whether rest days are actually paid. For an internationally recruited employee, the useful starting point is the employment relationship itself. The employing entity, contract, reporting line and payroll records establish far more than a job title does.

Indonesia enacted Law No. 27 of 2026 on Employment Protection on 28 October 2026. It superseded Law No. 13/2003 and specified employment provisions of Law No. 6/2023. The legislation applies nationally, including to employment in Bali. Earlier implementing regulations remain relevant only to the extent that they are consistent with the newer statute.

Someone living in Bali while providing independent services to an overseas client may have a materially different legal position. Residency, a remote-working arrangement and an Indonesian employment contract are not interchangeable. Immigration permission to carry out the activity is a separate matter, covered in NovAsia's guide to long-stay visas and immigration routes for Indonesia; it does not answer the working-hours question on its own.

Indonesia’s 40-hour week: five days or six?

The usual Indonesian workweek has two recognised patterns. A five-day schedule provides eight working hours per day; a six-day schedule allows up to seven per day. Both are subject to the same 40-hour weekly total under Article 115 of Law No. 27/2026. That last condition is easily overlooked. Six seven-hour shifts add up to 42 hours, not a lawful standard allocation of 40.

A six-day roster might distribute the week as seven hours on five days and five hours on the sixth. That is an illustration, not a prescribed roster for any particular occupation. The employment documents should identify the actual distribution, including which day is shorter and how rotating shifts are handled. A label such as “Monday to Saturday” is insufficient if no one can explain the total number of paid working hours.

There is also a difference between time on site and time counted as work. Article 118(2) requires a break of at least 30 minutes after four consecutive hours of work, and that break is excluded from working time. An office day running from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. with an uninterrupted one-hour meal break may contain eight working hours. A break spent handling customer messages or covering the reception desk is a different factual situation, whatever the roster calls it.

The five-day arrangement carries two weekly rest days; the six-day arrangement carries one. Rest days can fall on different weekdays in a shift-based business. Specific industries and roles may follow regulations made for those activities, but the employer needs to identify the relevant rule. A hotel operating around the clock does not, by itself, erase the employee's right to a properly defined schedule.

When extra hours become overtime and need approval

Imagine a shift finishing at 6 p.m. and a manager asking the team to stay until midnight. Six more working hours cannot simply be treated as an ordinary late finish. Article 116 of Law No. 27/2026 sets a general ceiling of four overtime hours in a day and 18 in a week. Certain sectors or activities have particular rules, but a tight deadline is not itself a statutory exemption.

The employee's consent and the employer's instruction are separate requirements. Under the new law, the instruction must be written or delivered through digital media. The record needs to make sense later: who requested the extra shift, for which date, over what period, and whether the employee agreed. Silence in a team chat is a poor substitute for that evidence. Regulation PP 35/2021 also addresses signed or digital overtime records and employee lists, subject to compatibility with the 2026 law.

A payroll system should then reflect the hours actually worked, not merely the hours first requested. A two-hour authorisation might turn into a three-hour assignment when a production problem continues. Equally, being logged into an app after dinner does not prove that every intervening minute was work ordered by the employer. Reliable timesheets and messages together tell a better story than either does alone.

Rest-day and public-holiday work create another layer. Different payment rules apply, and specific provisions may affect how overtime limits operate. Those situations deserve their own entries in the records, especially when a schedule crosses midnight. An auditable sequence — instruction, consent, actual hours, pay calculation — protects an employee's position without assuming every late message is automatically compensable overtime.

How overtime and public-holiday pay are calculated

Start with an hourly figure that can be reproduced from the payslip. Article 116(3) of Law No. 27/2026 uses base salary plus fixed allowances, divided by 173. Call that hourly amount H. Ordinary workday overtime is paid at 1.5 × H for the first hour and 2 × H for each subsequent hour. Two approved overtime hours would therefore produce 3.5 × H in overtime pay, without needing to invent a salary figure or assume anything about an individual's tax deductions.

That calculation makes the composition of pay important. A headline salary might include benefits that are not fixed allowances, while the official payroll has a different breakdown. The employee should be able to see the relevant components, daily time records, multiplier and final overtime amount. A contract clause saying “all extra hours are included” does not by itself explain how the statutory calculation has been satisfied.

Under Article 125, work on an official holiday is permitted for activities that must operate continuously or in other circumstances based on an employee-employer agreement. Official public holidays and weekly rest days then follow the article's stepped rates. On a five-day, 40-hour schedule, the first eight hours of such work are paid at 2 × H, the ninth at 3 × H and the tenth through twelfth at 4 × H. On a six-day, 40-hour schedule, the first seven hours are at 2 × H, the eighth at 3 × H, and the ninth through eleventh at 4 × H.

The six-day schedule has a further distinction when an official holiday coincides with the shortest working day: hours one to five attract 2 × H, hour six attracts 3 × H, and hours seven to nine attract 4 × H. Those details are why a single “holiday rate” on a payslip can be misleading. The date's legal status, the employee's five- or six-day roster and the hours actually performed all affect the result. Government-designated collective leave should not automatically be put in the same pay category as an official holiday.

Annual leave and the five-year long-rest rule

The minimum annual entitlement arises after 12 continuous months of employment: at least 12 working days under Article 118(5) of Law No. 27/2026. “Working days” matters. An employee on a five-day roster should not have a normal weekly rest day silently counted as one of the annual-leave working days merely because the leave period spans a weekend. The roster and the leave calculation have to fit together.

Annual leave under the statute is paid, with Article 123 providing for full wages during the relevant entitlement. Employees still need to follow the booking arrangements set out in the employment agreement, company regulations or collective agreement. A useful leave balance should explain opening entitlement, days taken and the remaining figure, particularly after a roster change or an approved absence. A bare number in a human-resources portal may not reveal how it was reached.

The October 2026 legislation also establishes long rest after five consecutive years of service, repeating at subsequent five-year milestones. The duration is 30 calendar days, not 30 working days. Article 118(3) protects pay and other benefits during the prescribed rest period, while Article 118(4) makes an important qualification: an employee who takes this long rest does not also receive annual leave for that year. A company should not present the benefit as a universal 30-plus-12-day package.

Service history becomes crucial around the five-year point. A change of team is easy to record; a move to another legal employer is more complicated when continuity is at stake. For someone whose employment has passed through multiple entities in a group, the employment records and applicable arrangements need to establish which service counts. Better company benefits may exist, but they must be distinguished from the statutory minimum. Payment for unused leave on termination belongs to the separate rules governing the end of employment, not to a general promise based solely on the current leave balance.

Public holidays and cuti bersama are not the same

A public holiday, a collective-leave day and an employee's weekly rest day can all appear as “days off” in a calendar, but they have different legal effects. A national public holiday — libur nasional — engages statutory rules about work on official holidays. Government-designated collective leave, known as cuti bersama, affects how a business organises time away from work. A private employer's decision to observe it needs to be distinguished from the individual employee's annual-leave booking.

Indonesia's joint three-minister decree dated 19 September 2025 established the official 2026 calendar. Its original wording reflected the earlier approach under which collective leave could reduce annual-leave balances. The legal position changed on 28 October 2026. Article 118(6) of Law No. 27/2026 now says that when a company implements collective leave designated by the central government, doing so must not reduce employees' annual-leave entitlement. Reading the old decree or circular guidance without that later statute would give an incomplete answer.

Consider a company that closes its office on a government-designated collective-leave date and marks every employee's annual balance down by one day. Under the new rule, that deduction requires scrutiny if it concerns a period after the law came into force. The analysis differs where the employee independently requested a personal annual-leave day unrelated to the government schedule. What the employer actually implemented matters; the word “holiday” in an email is not enough.

Timing matters as well. The 2026 statute took effect on 28 October, so it should not be assumed to retrospectively reopen every leave calculation from earlier in the year. Any such claim needs an assessment of the dates and applicable law at the time. Public-holiday work has its own pay tiers under Article 125, which do not automatically extend to every collective-leave day. Bali's local religious observances should likewise not be conflated with the national calendar without checking their official status.

Flexible schedules and senior positions need a closer look

“Managers don't get overtime” is a familiar statement, but it is not a sufficient legal explanation. Article 115 of Law No. 27/2026 allows specific working-time rules for certain industries and activities. An employer relying on those arrangements should be able to identify the current regulation and show how the position falls within it. Flexible start times or a remote-working option do not automatically waive statutory protections.

Regulation PP 35/2021 contains a narrower provision for certain senior job categories. Article 27 describes roles involving substantial planning, management or control responsibilities, working time that cannot readily be limited and higher pay. The category must be provided for in the employment agreement, company regulations or collective agreement. The regulation itself addresses the employer's overtime obligation where the category has not been properly defined.

That is not the end of the analysis in November 2026. The later statute, particularly Article 116(2), states the employer's duty to pay overtime. Earlier implementing regulations continue only insofar as they do not conflict with the new law. How a particular senior-role exclusion survives that interaction is a legal question, and it would be misleading to declare every person carrying a management title exempt.

Take an internationally hired regional manager on a fixed monthly salary. If the company insists that late-night calls are already paid for, the employee needs more than the phrase “senior position” on an offer letter. Actual responsibilities, the relevant contractual designation, working-time records and a supportable legal basis will determine the position. For a foreign national, the permitted scope of employment is a separate compliance issue; it cannot be used to brush aside the working-hours question.

What to keep if overtime or leave is disputed

A discrepancy between a payslip and hours actually worked can seem obvious while a shift is still fresh. Months later, messages have disappeared, rotas have changed, and a manager may remember a different authorisation. The most persuasive record usually combines the employment agreement and company rules with timesheets, written or digital instructions, employee consent, pay statements and leave approvals.

A useful written payroll query distinguishes missing hours from the wrong pay rate. One dispute asks why an additional shift never reached the timesheet. Another asks which salary components were included in the hourly base or why public-holiday work was paid using the ordinary workday formula. Leave disputes need the opening balance, the dates entered into the system and any collective-leave deduction. Those records make the request specific enough for an employer to answer.

If the employer cannot resolve the discrepancy, Indonesia has the Ministry of Manpower's LAPOR MENAKER complaints service, alongside regional labour offices known as Disnaker. Different routes may apply to suspected breaches of labour standards and individual employment disputes. The official service uses an account-based reporting process and asks for supporting information. Submitting a report should not be presented as a guarantee of confidentiality in every setting, a quick award or successful recovery.

These rules are current to 9 November 2026. An employee's contract, the dates at issue, the actual employment relationship and any later legal changes can alter the assessment. Independent Indonesian employment-law advice is particularly valuable where a dispute might affect job continuity or employer-linked immigration status. This article provides general information, not an opinion on the merits or likely outcome of an individual claim.