A global breakthrough for platform workers: what the new ILO Convention means

Platform workers are for the first time the subject of a global labour standard following the adoption of the Decent Work in the Platform Economy Convention at the 114th International Labour Conference (ILC) in Geneva.

Adopted with overwhelming support from governments, unions and employer groups - with 406 votes for, 8 against and 36 abstentions - it makes a simple yet significant point: that all platform workers are entitled to labour rights and protections.  

As Amanda Brown, of the TUC delegation, who led the workers’ group during the negotiations, said: 

“Those who carry our meals through the rain, who clean and care in our homes, who label the data that trains our machines, and who answer the call of an app at every hour of the day and night—these workers are named, recognized, and protected by a binding international standard. Today they cease to be invisible.” 

The result of years of negotiations between worker governments and employer representatives, the convention is a product of compromise. However, as a binding international baseline, it is a major step towards ending the race to the bottom in platform work and the systemic exploitation that workers experience.  

For trade unions, this outcome reflects years of organising by delivery riders, drivers, care workers and those working on remote platforms around the world. It also sends a clear signal: digital innovation cannot be used as a pretext to strip workers of fundamental rights. 

What does the convention do? 

The convention establishes simple but powerful principles. 

Key provisions include: 

• Universal coverage: The convention applies to all platform workers, online or location-based, engaged directly or via intermediaries, irrespective of whether they’re treated as employed or self-employed. Certain provisions permit adaptations of protection based on employment status. However self-employed workers are concretely covered, with the convention extending several important rights and protections. 
• Primacy of facts: Classification will be guided mainly by the facts. This means that contractual clauses cannot be relied upon by platforms to misclassify workers. 
• Collective rights: Member states are required to respect, promote and realise fundamental principles and rights at work, including freedom of association and collective bargaining rights, which have long been denied to many platform workers.  
• Fair pay and social protection: Requirements for timely remuneration (not below minimum wage standards) and access to social security. 
• Algorithmic accountability: New rules on transparency, and right to written explanation and a review of automated decisions, with meaningful human involvement. This breaks new ground in global labour standards. 
• Protection from unfair deactivation: Safeguards against arbitrary suspension or exclusion from platforms. 
• Health, safety and dignity: Rights to withdraw from unsafe work, plus protections against violence and harassment.  
• Data rights: Safeguards for workers’ personal data, preventing processing beyond the legitimate purpose for which it is collected. 

Taken together, these provisions recognise that platforms do not simply connect work, they organise and control it. They must therefore be accountable just as traditional employers are. 

Why this matters 

ILO conventions are legally binding international labour standards that set minimum rights and conditions for work, which countries agree to follow when they ratify them.  

Even when they’re not ratified, they can be highly influential when courts or governments try to decide how a right should be interpreted. 

The convention therefore reinforces the ability of the ILO to respond to and regulate technological change where it affects workers. 

First, it breaks with the idea that employment rights only attach to traditional jobs. Instead, it establishes a floor of rights and protections, several of which are extended to workers regardless of employment classification. A fissured employment status framework can allow employers to evade their responsibilities by denying that those who work for them are workers and misclassifying them as self-employed. This remains a problem in the UK and a serious challenge across the world. 

Second, it is the first binding international labour instrument to address automated systems at work, a defining feature of digital labour platforms, where algorithms are used to make managerial decisions. 

Platform workers and their representatives are now entitled to transparency about the use of automated systems and the extent to which they affect working conditions or access to work. Automated systems must be used responsibly by platforms, consistent with fundamental principles and rights at work. Importantly, this includes freedom of association and collective bargaining. Finally, workers are entitled to a written explanation and a review of decisions that result in money not being paid, suspension, deactivation or termination with appropriate human involvement.  As highlighted by leading labour lawyer, Valerio de Stefano, this prevents a purely automated reconsideration. 

Third, it reinforces the role of collective organisation. Platform workers can now point to an international standard affirming their right to organise and bargain. 

However, like all ILO conventions, its impact will depend on national ratification and implementation. Governments must now decide whether to adopt the convention into domestic law, and trade unions will need to campaign to ensure it translates into real change.   

The UK context: progress, but more to be done 

In the UK, one of a small number of governments to abstain on the convention, the issues addressed by it are already familiar.  

While the convention creates a useful international baseline which will have a notable impact at the national level if ratified, it is not a magic bullet. Much more will need to be done to tackle issues faced by platform workers in the UK.  

The current three-tier system of employment status leaves many platform workers in a grey area and enables bogus self-employment. A consultation on employment status reform has been promised but not yet delivered. 

Beyond this, we also need a guarantee of reviews with substantive and meaningful human involvement of key decisions affecting workers’ livelihoods. Failure to do so leaves workers unable to effectively challenge decisions delivered by opaque algorithmic systems. Doing so, along with the right to a written explanation, will introduce a basic accountability mechanism. 

Power in the workplace is already tilted towards employers and operators. Algorithmic management skews it further. Only by allowing the pooling of worker data and placing transparency obligations on employers and operators can some of this imbalance start to be addressed. The TUC, working with a cross-party group of stakeholders has set out a model for how collective data rights for trade union could work. 

Ratifying the convention would provide a solid floor of labour standards to build upon. 

What comes next 

The adoption of the convention is not the end of the story: it is the beginning of a new phase.  

The task now is to: 

• Win ratification across as many countries as possible. 
• Translate the convention into national law and enforcement. 
• Support organising on the ground, using the Convention as a tool for bargaining and advocacy. 

For the trade union movement, this is a major step forward but also a reminder that progress depends on continued pressure and solidarity.