As the International Labour Conference draws to a close, Equidem’s work continues — more urgent than ever.
This year, Equidem joined Gig Workers United and other worker-led organisations in Geneva to ensure that the voices of platform workers — particularly those in outsourced and often invisible roles — were brought into the heart of international labour policymaking. We were proud to stand alongside these workers and to contribute rigorous new research to a conversation that must now move from recognition to action.
Special thanks to UNIA Switzerland, the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), the Gig and Platform Service Workers Union (GIPSWU – India), the Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE – US), PowerSwitch Action, and the International Alliance of App-Based Transport Workers (IAATW – US) — organisers and frontline activists who took great personal risks to be in Geneva, standing up for platform workers and demanding justice on the global stage. Your courage and clarity remind us what this movement is truly about.
The platform economy has transformed how work is organised across the globe, often through intermediated hiring structures that fragment responsibility and erode accountability. Too often, the burden of this structure falls on migrant workers and others already facing precarity — people hired not by the platforms that ultimately benefit from their labour, but by third-party logistics providers or BPO firms that offer few protections and little recourse.
To inform and support efforts at the ILC, Equidem launched two key reports:
“Scroll. Click. Suffer.” reveals the psychological, physical, and sexual harms experienced by content moderators and data labellers in Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, and The Philippines. These workers perform essential tasks that underpin social media and AI systems but are exposed daily to traumatic content under highly exploitative conditions.
Read the report: https://equidem.org/reports/scroll-click-suffer-the-hidden-human-cost-of-content-moderation-and-data-labelling/
“Realising Decent Work in the Platform Economy” focuses on the risks faced by delivery riders in the Gulf and outsourced data workers worldwide. Drawing on more than 200 interviews, the brief makes a clear case for expanding the scope of labour regulation to include workers hired through intermediaries — a growing segment of the digital economy.
Together, these reports provide evidence that intermediated platform work is not peripheral — it is foundational. And the risks these workers face are not incidental — they are systemic.
That is why the progress made at this year’s ILC matters. Global Majority states, supported by many worker delegates and civil society allies, advanced the call for a binding ILO Convention on decent work in platform-based economies. This is a critical step toward global standards that reflect how work is actually organised today.
In the years to come, Equidem will continue pressing for this Convention and working alongside allies to build the political and collective power needed to realise it. We will keep investigating abuses, supporting worker organising, and pushing for inclusive, enforceable standards that protect all workers — not just those at the centre of attention, but also those deliberately kept at the margins.
Work may evolve — but the principles of dignity, safety, and fairness must remain non-negotiable.
