'Warning, not a victory': Gig workers' union rejects ILO convention on platform work

By A Representative 

The International Labour Organization’s adoption of Convention No. 193, the world’s first binding global standard for platform and gig workers, has drawn a sharply critical response from the Gig & Platform Service Workers Union (GIPSWU), which represents millions of app-based workers across India. In a statement, GIPSWU described the new framework as a “compromised text that still leaves too much power with platforms, too much discretion with governments, and too little that will immediately change the lives of ordinary workers.” 

While the Convention acknowledges long-standing grievances such as algorithmic control, pay instability and arbitrary deactivation, the union argued that “recognition is not justice” and that the agreement will fail to deliver enforceable rights for the world’s estimated 154 to 435 million gig workers.

The new Convention, approved on 12 June 2026 by an overwhelming majority of 406 votes to eight at the ILO’s 114th annual conference in Geneva, establishes for the first time an international legal framework governing algorithmic management and sets baseline protections for pay, social security and occupational safety that apply regardless of a worker’s formal employment classification. Under its provisions, platforms must disclose automated decision-making systems, provide human review mechanisms, and protect workers against unjustified deactivation. 

However, GIPSWU pointed to critical weaknesses: the text allows for exclusions of certain worker categories, leaves key safeguards to national implementation, and does not guarantee a universal living wage floor. 

Union officials warned that platform companies, which are already organised globally, will continue to exploit legal gaps, shift responsibility across jurisdictions and evade meaningful accountability while workers “remain trapped in low pay, insecurity, surveillance, and silence.”

The union’s rejection of the ILO standard comes after a year of intensifying protest actions by platform workers across India and around the world. In May 2026, GIPSWU led a five-hour nationwide shutdown of app-based services in response to a ₹3 per litre hike in petrol and diesel prices, affecting an estimated 1.2 crore gig workers across ride-hailing, food delivery and quick‑commerce platforms. 

Demonstrators demanded a minimum payment of ₹20 per kilometre, warning that stagnant payouts combined with rising fuel and living costs were pushing many to the edge. “Delivery workers will not be able to bear the impact of rising petrol and diesel prices during the ongoing severe heatwave conditions,” GIPSWU president Seema Singh said at the time.

The protests have been repeated across the country. On New Year’s Eve 2025, a nationwide “log‑off” strike saw between one and three lakh workers disable their apps from 7 am until midnight, demanding social security benefits, assured wages, and an end to punitive algorithmic systems.

Smaller actions have followed: in Coimbatore, gig workers staged a protest demanding formal labour status and basic amenities such as drinking water and toilets; in Hyderabad, customers faced delayed deliveries as drivers walked out over per‑kilometre rates. The wave of mobilisation extends far beyond India. 

In late May 2026, private hire drivers across Britain joined a 24‑hour global strike alongside workers in the United States, Nigeria and Uruguay, calling for better pay and protections. Just days earlier, delivery drivers in Saskatoon, Canada, entered their seventh day of protest against “poverty wages and unsafe working conditions,” backed by the United Steelworkers union. On May Day 2026, US gig workers staged coordinated strikes in solidarity with other precarious labour forces, while Massachusetts celebrated the formation of America’s first rideshare drivers’ union – the first major private‑sector collective bargaining victory of its kind since the 1940s.

The underlying conditions driving these protests are well documented. 

A Human Rights Watch report released in May 2026, titled “Algorithms of Exploitation,” provided extensive evidence of how digital platforms use opaque algorithmic systems to assign tasks, set pay, monitor performance and even terminate workers, all while shifting risks onto labour and limiting avenues for appeal. 

The report documented unstable and unpredictable pay, long working hours that fail to yield a living income, barriers to organising, and a near‑total absence of social protection in the event of injury or illness. Previous HRW research found that US platform workers earned a median of just US$5.12 per hour after expenses, roughly 30% below the federal minimum wage. 

The burden of rising operational costs, as seen in India’s fuel hikes, falls disproportionately on workers who already operate on razor‑thin margins. Many delivery executives log 10‑14 hour shifts in congested urban corridors and extreme heat, yet per‑order payouts have failed to keep pace with either order volumes or the cost of staying on the road.

GIPSWU’s statement argues that the structural disadvantages faced by workers are not accidental but inherent to a business model that treats labour as a disposable input. “Platform companies are already organised globally,” the union noted. “Their business models, capital, investors, data systems, and algorithmic controls operate across borders, while workers are forced to struggle country by country, law by law, and case by case.” 

In this context, a convention that does not establish strong, enforceable rights in unmistakable terms, the union warned, will not bring substantial change. “Workers did not fight simply for better language. They fought for power, bargaining rights, protection from retaliation, full recognition as workers, employer accountability, and real remedies when rights are violated.”

National responses to the ILO standard remain uneven. The United States and New Zealand voted against adoption; the United Kingdom and India abstained. Governments that choose to ratify the Convention must still translate its provisions into domestic law, a process that unions fear will invite further delay and dilution. .

GIPSWU insists that the Convention must be treated as a “floor for continued struggle, not as the end of it.” The union is calling on all member states to ratify the agreement quickly, close every permissible exclusion, enact stronger national laws, and ensure full enforcement through labour inspection, collective bargaining rights, social security, wage protection, data rights, and safeguards against arbitrary suspension and termination. “Platform workers need more than symbolic recognition,” the statement concluded. “They need enforceable rights, global accountability, and a system that puts human dignity above digital exploitation.”