Overview and key findings

As the International Labour Conference (ILC) negotiates new international standards on decent work in the platform economy, Equidem’s research highlights a critical reality: platform labour is increasingly organised through outsourced and intermediated labour systems. These systems leave workers exposed to exploitation while obscuring accountability. Platform companies often maintain direct control over how workers perform their jobs — setting targets, allocating tasks, and managing performance through algorithms — while simultaneously shifting formal employment responsibilities onto other entities.

These entities include third-party logistics firms (3PLs) handling last-mile delivery operations, business process outsourcing companies (BPOs) managing large-scale digital tasks like content moderation and AI data labelling, and various labour intermediaries. Equidem’s evidence is grounded in extensive worker testimony across multiple sectors and geographies, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Colombia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, India, Cameroon, Ghana, and Uganda. Across these sectors, workers reported excessive productivity pressure, opaque management systems, retaliation for raising concerns, and barriers to organising.

Key negotiation priorities

The proposed Convention and Recommendation should ensure that platform companies cannot evade labour obligations through subcontracting, labour intermediation, or contractual misclassification. Equidem outlines several key priorities for these negotiations. Firstly, they must ensure broad scope and coverage, explicitly including workers employed or engaged through subcontractors, 3PLs, BPOs, and staffing agencies where digital platforms organise or control work. Secondly, accountability must be strengthened across supply chains by establishing clear joint responsibility where platforms exercise operational control or derive economic benefit.

Thirdly, employment relationships should be determined based on the reality of work, focusing on the facts of the role and the degree of operational control rather than contractual labels alone. Fourthly, there is a need to strengthen the regulation of algorithmic management. Workers should have access to information about automated systems, meaningful human review of decisions, protection from unjustified suspension, and accessible appeal mechanisms. Fifthly, the Convention should protect migrant workers by including stronger protections against recruitment fees, debt bondage, and visa-linked coercion.

Sixthly, the framework must recognise psychosocial and climate-related occupational safety and health (OSH) risks, such as traumatic content exposure, heat stress, fatigue, and algorithmically intensified work systems. Finally, the Convention must protect collective bargaining and freedom of association, extending these rights across outsourced platform labour systems and protecting workers from retaliation, surveillance, or blacklisting.

The emerging model of platform labour

Equidem’s research demonstrates that an increasing share of platform work is organised through outsourced labour systems where workers may never have a formal employment relationship with the platform company exercising operational control. In the Gulf region, migrant delivery riders were overwhelmingly employed through 3PL firms rather than directly by platforms. Despite this, workers consistently described platform control over delivery allocation, productivity targets, ratings systems, and penalties. Similarly, lead technology firms rely on BPO supply chains for AI data work and content moderation to distance themselves from labour obligations while retaining commercial influence.

Across these sectors, workers described excessive hours, wage deductions, and ineffective grievance systems. These findings point to the emergence of a fissured platform economy where labour risks are displaced downward through layers of subcontracting. This is a central governance challenge: if standards focus only on directly engaged gig workers, companies may continue to avoid obligations by restructuring work through intermediaries.

What workers reported

In research involving migrant riders and logistics workers in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Equidem documented recruitment debt, deceptive recruitment, and unsafe working conditions, including heat stress and exhaustion. In the report ‘Free To Be Exploited’, it was found that 99% of interviewed delivery riders were hired through 3PLs, yet their daily work was directed by platform algorithms and productivity systems. Workers frequently reported that despite their formal employment status, platform companies exercised significant operational control through productivity management tools.

Research into data workers and content moderators, detailed in the report ‘SCROLL. CLICK. SUFFER.’, documented exposure to traumatic and violent content. Workers reported severe psychosocial harms, including anxiety, depression, and PTSD symptoms, alongside insecure employment through BPO arrangements. These findings demonstrate that OSH risks in the platform economy are not limited to physical injury but include psychological trauma and harmful productivity systems.

Outsourced platform labour systems

Across sectors, workers consistently described confusion regarding who was responsible for wages, working conditions, grievance handling, and occupational safety. This fragmentation of accountability is a defining characteristic of outsourced platform labour systems and represents a major challenge for effective labour regulation. The evidence suggests these are not isolated abuses but structural features of an increasingly outsourced and fissured platform economy.

Conclusion

The platform economy is increasingly outsourced, powered by a migrant labour force, and algorithmically managed. The proposed Convention represents a historic opportunity to ensure labour standards evolve alongside these changing business models. However, weak standards risk institutionalising fragmented accountability systems. The Convention should close these accountability gaps rather than normalise them to protect the expanding outsourced platform workforce currently outside meaningful labour protections.