Transport workers fighting for decent work in the platform economy

Transport Workers fighting for Decent Work in the Platform Economy

Q1: In your view, what are the main challenges faced by platform workers in the transport sector in the MENA region?

Platform-based transport work remains one of the fastest-growing forms of employment globally, including in the MENA region. More and more workers earn their living through ride-hailing, delivery, and freight apps. Despite their diversity, these workers face a shared set of challenges, beginning with the absence of basic rights that all workers deserve.

The key issues include:

• Misclassification of employment status: Many platforms classify workers as “independent contractors” to deny rights and evade responsibilities.

• Unstable income: Most platform workers in transport earn less than the minimum wage once fuel, maintenance, and other operating costs are deducted. Waiting time is often unpaid, and access to work is controlled by opaque algorithms.

• Algorithmic management: Workers are rated, ranked, and sometimes deactivated without explanation, with little transparency or recourse.

• Occupational health and safety risks: Long hours, fatigue, inadequate safety equipment, and limited access to sanitation facilities remain common problems.

• Barriers to organising: Legal and practical obstacles make collective representation more difficult for platform workers than for traditional transport workers.

In the MENA region, these global challenges are compounded by additional, context-specific issues:

• High levels of informality: Where informal work is widespread, regulation and enforcement become even more difficult.

• Limited access to social protections: Many platform workers lack health insurance, sick leave, and pensions.

• Weak digital infrastructure and labour inspection systems: These gaps allow platforms to operate with minimal oversight or accountability.

• Deepened inequalities: Migrant workers, young workers, and women are heavily represented in platform work. Their limited legal protections make them especially vulnerable to exploitation and the impacts of digitalisation.

To address these issues, the ITF has set out eleven global demands of transport platform workers, calling on governments and employers to close regulatory gaps and ensure that emerging ILO standards genuinely reflect workers’ lived realities.
More here: https://www.itfglobal.org/en/in-focus/future/platform-workers

Our goal is to ensure that new international instruments including the proposed ILO Convention and Recommendation on “Decent Work in the Platform Economy”, advance meaningful protections and decent work for all.

Q2: Conflicts often arise between traditional or established workers in transportation and those working through emerging platforms. From your perspective, what strategies can be used to address these conflicts and mediate between the parties in order to find common ground to join forces in addressing the precarious nature of platform based jobs but also the possibilities it brings within? 

Tensions do arise, often rooted in unequal regulation, unfair competition, and the perception that platform models undermine established jobs. But in reality, traditional transport workers and platform workers face the same pressures: rapid technological change, automation, and growing precarity. These shared challenges form the foundations for unity.

Several strategies can help bridge divides and reinforce solidarity:

• Promoting decent work for all: Advocating for fair pay, social protections, and safe working conditions regardless of employment model - helps workers recognise their shared interests.

• Inclusive dialogue and joint organising: Trade unions and worker associations can create spaces where traditional and platform workers identify common challenges and develop united demands.

• Fair competition rules: Regulations should ensure that all transport providers whether app-based or not, comply with the same labour and safety standards, removing incentives for undercutting.

Technology is reshaping how people and goods move across the world. Platform work continues to grow and cannot be ignored. Unions must participate actively in shaping technological change, including by engaging platform companies as stakeholders.

Ultimately, solidarity will determine whether digital transformation benefits workers. Only by standing together transport workers can push for a future that is both innovative and fair.

Q3: You were personally involved in the negotiation of the “ILC.114/Report V(3) “Decent work in the platform economy” report.  From your perspective, what are the anticipated next steps within the ILO framework and how can the workers’ movement better prepare to strengthen its negotiating position?"

In June 2025, the International Labour Conference (ILC) began the first-ever standard-setting discussions on “Decent Work in the Platform Economy.” In a historic breakthrough, governments, employers, and workers agreed to pursue a binding ILO Convention, supported by a Recommendation.

This is a major milestone for transport workers. Platform models dominate urban mobility, food delivery, and freight logistics, yet millions of transport platform workers worldwide still lack access to social protection, face algorithmic control, and are denied fundamental labour rights.

The 2025 discussions, however, revealed significant disagreements, and many critical issues were deferred to 2026. This means the coming year is crucial.

Key next steps include:

• Influencing the ILO’s updated “brown report” and ensuring worker perspectives shape the 2026 negotiations.

• Securing clear standards on worker classification, collective bargaining rights, algorithmic accountability, and enforcement mechanisms.

• Mobilising unions nationally: Trade unions must pressure their governments through national centres to support strong international standards that reflect workers’ lived experiences.

• Strengthening global labour unity: The ITF is coordinating with affiliates, the ITUC, and other Global Union Federations to ensure a united labour position.

• Gathering worker evidence: Platform workers’ testimonies and data will be critical to shaping the Convention and Recommendation.

The lead-up to the June 2026 ILC is decisive. The workers’ movement must ensure that the final Convention and Recommendation close the regulatory gaps that have enabled exploitation and that they truly deliver decent work in the digital economy.

The ITF will continue its global campaign to regulate platform work, shape the draft instruments, and ensure the voices of transport and logistics platform workers are not only heard, but centred in the process.

Baker Khundakji is a prominent leader within the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), currently serving as the Arab World Regional Secretary, Director of Young Transport Workers, and the organization’s Future of Work Lead. Based in Amman, Jordan, she has been part of the ITF since 2004 and an active voice in the global trade union movement for more than 15 years. She launched the ITF’s gig economy program and is widely recognized for expanding youth participation across the organization.