The Forgotten Workers of Lebanon

Every year, the Lebanese government marks Labor Day with speeches from official sources, often neoliberal in tone, accompanied by symbolic gestures such as official business closures (though you can usually still get food delivered). Public figures frequently invoke the "dignity of labor" – as former President Aoun did in his 2022 speech, stating: "From the heart of difficult conditions we suffer from, I pay tribute to every Lebanese worker for their efforts every day to earn a living by honest effort."

Yet behind the slogans, more than 60% of the workforce in the country remains informal, without contracts or legal protections. Labor’s dignity is celebrated as inherent to labor itself, while the conditions under which most workers actually labor remain far from dignified.

From care work and agriculture to delivery and construction, Lebanon’s economy runs on the labor of people excluded through deliberate policies that prioritize profit over workers’ welfare. Many are migrants. Many are women. All are systematically kept outside formal protections.

The Expansion of Informal Labor in Lebanon

While Lebanon’s economic collapse in 2019 accelerated the spread of informal work, the foundations were laid decades earlier. Informal labor is rooted in the triumph of neoliberalism and the shift toward post-industrial economics in the 1990s. Globalization, technological advances, and the restructuring of labor markets have contributed to the disappearance of the traditional working class, replacing stable employment with fluid, outsourced, and precarious forms of work. Workers, historically central to labor movements, are increasingly unprotected and atomized. The shift toward gig and contract work has weakened unions, eroded solidarity, and left workers to navigate their labor rights in isolation.

One major example of atomized labor in Lebanon is the delivery sector. Delivery drivers are treated as freelancers, meaning they do not benefit from paid days off. Their wages are earned daily; if they fall sick or decide to rest, they lose their only source of income. The main delivery company in Lebanon, Toters, employs thousands of "freelancers" and refers to them as an "army" of delivery drivers. Most of these drivers are Syrian refugees, which heightens their vulnerability to exploitation. Toters shields itself from its own workers through the platform: by operating through an app and layers of team leaders, it avoids direct accountability while enforcing strict control over drivers’ schedules, suspending accounts for missed peak hours, and denying access to basic protections like health or vehicle insurance.

The construction sector offers another example. While construction workers are formally protected by the Lebanese Labor Code, the sector is dominated by migrant daily wage laborers who are hired informally under highly exploitative conditions. The government, prioritizing sectoral development, often turns a blind eye to the abusive practices of construction companies and subcontractors. Informal labor in Lebanon, therefore, has long been a deliberate policy choice rather than simply a crisis-driven outcome.

Informality as an Economic and Political Structure

The concept of "formal" versus "informal" labor divisions has been critiqued by feminist theorists like Silvia Federici and Angela Davis, as well as decolonial thinkers. They argue that these distinctions are not neutral, but historically constructed to reinforce hierarchies of race and gender. By exploiting existing racist and sexist ideologies, employers, backed by government protection, can deliberately exclude certain groups or entire professions from formal labor protections, making exploitation both legal and easier to maintain. In this system, unpaid, gendered, and racialized labor becomes a cornerstone of capitalist economies, with informal labor acting as a structural necessity that allows for the exploitation of cheap, unprotected workers while avoiding the costs associated with rights, protections, or political demands.

The Kafala system in Lebanon exemplifies this structural exclusion, where migrant domestic workers, predominantly women, are deprived of basic labor protections. Excluded from the Lebanese Labor Code, they are denied essential rights like a minimum wage and social security. Their labor conditions, including salary and days off, are determined through bilateral contracts with employers arranged by private recruitment agencies upon their arrival in Lebanon – a practice designed to bypass regulations and avoid enforceable protections. Moreover, the General Directorate of General Security, the legal body responsible for overseeing their residency, treats migrant domestic workers as potential threats to public order rather than legitimate workers. This approach reinforces their vulnerable, dependent status and perpetuates the racialized and gendered hierarchies that sustain their exploitation. By remaining outside the formal labor framework, migrant workers are rendered cheap and disposable, enabling ongoing exploitation while maintaining the illusion of legal and social order.

Another example is the agricultural sector. An ILO study published in 2024 estimates that 88% of Lebanese individuals working in agriculture are informal, while a 100% of their Syrian counterparts – who make up the majority of the sector – are excluded from labor protections and social security. This exclusion is not a loophole, nor does it only target migrants, though they are especially vulnerable to its impacts. Lebanon’s 1946 Labor Code intentionally excludes agriculture from its provisions, and the lack of a legal definition for "farmer" ensures agricultural labor remains unregulated. Informality in agriculture, therefore, serves a critical economic function. It allows the state to sustain an agricultural economy without investing in rural development, providing welfare, or confronting the political implications of integrating large numbers of migrant workers. Capitalist states systematically construct "zones of informality" to maintain flexible, cheap, and disposable labor forces, while masking this dispossession through narratives of national economic necessity or market efficiency.

Reforms in a Stagnant System

Lebanon’s 1946 Labor Code has undergone minimal reform over eight decades, rendering it an outdated framework that fails to offer meaningful protection for workers. As a cornerstone of any social contract, the Labor Code should reflect broader social dynamics. In Lebanon, its rigidity reveals a social contract that is not only fragile but systematically violated, prioritizing economic growth over the welfare of all workers, regardless of nationality.

In April 2025, parliament passed reforms introducing "flexible work" arrangements into the Labor Code. These reforms aim to align with international labor standards and open the door for discussions on the need for a new labor law that matches emerging labor market trends. While lawmakers in parliament debated labor standards, contracted teachers outside protested for stable incomes and the shift toward more permanent employment. These teachers, among the most precarious workers in Lebanon, lack monthly salaries, job security, and social protection. Although employed by the Ministry of Education, they are not treated as equal to full-time teachers. Notably, they are among the few groups still organizing collectively to demand their rights.

Rather than addressing structural precarity, Lebanon’s labor reforms selectively modernize work arrangements while preserving long-standing exclusions. These reforms do not eliminate labor injustices – they merely make them bearable enough for workers to continue working. The result is a superficial tweaking of a labor market that entrenches exploitation across multiple sectors, leaving workers with little real power or security.

Toward a Politics of the Informal Majority

As the country moves toward political change with the new government, it is crucial to confront these precarious conditions faced by workers and build a Labor Code that offers real protections for all. A serious national conversation, driven by trade unions, civil society organizations, and activists, must confront the realities of the informal economy across all sectors and dismantle the exploitative systems that govern the most vulnerable workers. Established labor unions, in particular, must take up the demands of informal workers, who remain legally barred from forming formal unions and defending their rights directly.

Advocacy should not focus on integrating informal workers into a broken system, but on reimagining protections, recognition, and solidarity for all workers. This includes guaranteeing rights such as inclusive social security, minimum wage protections, and safe, fair working conditions. Labor rights must address the needs and realities of informal workers, ensuring their dignity is upheld and recognizing them as integral members of the workforce.

Labor is dignified not merely by the act of working, but by the recognition, respect, and rights afforded to workers and through tangible improvements in their material conditions. The true dignity of labor can only be achieved when it is accompanied by justice—justice that includes access to labor rights, fair wages, protections against exploitation, and an equitable distribution of the wealth created by that labor.

The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.