The International Labour Organisation (ILO) Governing Body has announced that it will add to its 2025 Conference an agenda item to discuss standards related to decent work on the platform economy.
This decision is great news for those committed to the assurance of workers’ rights in the platform economy. It means the ILO can move forward in discussing and, hopefully, approving an international convention with guidelines that ensure standards of fair work for the millions of workers who provide services via digital labour platforms.
In addition to the government officials and unions who have been supporting this agenda inside the ILO, more than 300 professors, lecturers, and researchers launched a Global Manifesto for a Fairer Platform Economy last October, in which they advocate for the approval of an international convention ensuring standards of decent work for platform workers.
Platform work was a focus of attention at the ILO since last year. In October, a group of experts with representatives from unions, platforms, and academic institutions gathered to discuss the main challenges of platform work and decide on the role that the ILO could take in facing those challenges. Unfortunately, platform representatives and some government officials refused to go on towards a consensus on the need for an international convention.
The decision to reopen this discussion at the 2025 ILO conference comes from the Board’s members’ analysis of the document “A normative gap analysis on decent work in the platform economy”, drawing from the Expert group debate. The document lists gaps in the application of international labour standards and challenges in the platform economy that are not properly addressed in current international labour standards. The text lists gaps in topics such as employment relationships, freedom of association and collective bargaining, forced labour, elimination of child labour, equality and opportunity of treatment, labour inspection, employment policy, employment security, wages, working time, health and safety, social security, migrant workers, specific categories, and protection of workers’ data.
With this decision, the Governing Body confirmed that the organisation will move forward with elaborating international guidelines to address these problems. The next step will therefore consist in defining the primary problems faced by platform workers and adequate solutions to solve them.
The Global Manifesto for a Fairer Platform Economy and the Fairwork Principles provide a good start for this by listing challenges and guidelines to be considered for a future international convention. The Manifesto:
The road to 2025 opens an opportunity to deepen the scrutiny on this topic and present solutions which will be a landmark for the platform economy. An international convention can be a powerful regulatory tool to establish limits to abuses and unfair practices in digital labour platforms. In addition, it can set the example for countries to approve of and implement national legislation to improve the standards of platform work and to legitimise the requests of different actors fighting for better and fairer working conditions.
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