The Shift in International Rules on Platform Work: ILO Convention No. 193 and the Avilés Declaration

Platform-based delivery riders, drivers, domestic and care service providers, freelancers, and online workers receive work through platforms and are controlled not only by their contractual counterparties but also by automated dispatch and evaluation systems. However, existing labor laws were designed around workplaces and traditional employer-employee relationships, and often failed to clearly define who is responsible for platform work and the scope of workers’ rights.

Convention No. 193, adopted by the International Labour Organization (ILO) on June 12, 2026, is the first international labor convention dedicated to addressing this gap in the platform economy. The Avilés Declaration on Labour, adopted on July 2 of the same year, is a regional policy agreement under which Spain and Latin American countries will jointly address platform work, artificial intelligence in the field of labor, care, and the social and solidarity economy.

What Changed in 2026

As of August 23, 2026, the main developments are as follows.

The key change is that platform work has been defined not as an exceptional issue arising from a new industry, but as a labor issue to which principles concerning remuneration, safety, social security, freedom of association, personal data, and non-discrimination must apply. At the same time, AI and algorithms are viewed not merely as work tools, but as management systems that determine working conditions.

Differences Between ILO Convention No. 193 and the Avilés Declaration

The two documents point in the same direction, but differ in their legal nature and how they operate.

The adoption of the ILO Convention does not by itself automatically change the domestic law of every country. Each country must decide whether to ratify it and establish the necessary laws and enforcement systems. Whether the Convention may be applied directly in domestic courts after ratification may also vary depending on each country’s constitution and legal system.

Instead of legal binding force, the Avilés Declaration has a political coordination function. Countries can affirm a common agenda and connect it to follow-up meetings, policy plans, and technical cooperation, but individuals cannot immediately claim pay or reinstatement in court solely on the basis of the declaration.

Scope of Platform Work Covered by the Convention

Platform work does not consist of only one type.

• Location-based platform work: Work performed at a specific location, such as delivery, passenger transport, cleaning, repairs, domestic services, and care
• Online platform work: Work performed remotely, such as translation, design, programming, data classification, and content review
• Task-based work: Work assigned in short units and paid on a per-task basis
• Ongoing service work: Work in which workers are connected to clients through a platform but provide services repeatedly over a certain period

An important aspect of the Convention is that eligibility for protection is not determined solely by the label used in a contract. Even if a platform classifies a worker as self-employed, a partner, or an independent contractor, it is necessary to examine who actually sets prices, assigns work, controls how the work is performed, and has the power to impose sanctions.

However, this does not mean that all platform workers are uniformly deemed employees. Rather, the approach is to accurately determine the existence of an employment relationship based on the actual facts and to provide necessary basic protections as platform workers even to those who are not recognized as being in an employment relationship.

Employment Status Is Determined by the Actual Relationship, Not the Contractual Label

The most important question in platform work disputes is whether a worker is an employee or an independent business operator. The answer may affect the scope of minimum wage, working time, paid leave, workers’ compensation, dismissal protection, and social insurance coverage.

The facts that may be considered in making this determination include the following.

• Whether the platform effectively determines remuneration or fees
• Whether the worker can freely negotiate prices or terms with clients
• Whether refusing an automated assignment results in disadvantages to ratings or access to future work
• Whether the platform controls the sequence of tasks, routes, response times, or method of service
• Whether the platform can restrict account access or terminate the contract because of a low rating
• Whether the worker actually has an independent customer base and bears business risk

The Convention takes the approach of prioritizing the substance of the relationship over formal contractual language and requiring effective procedures for correcting misclassification. Each country must design specific determination criteria and legal presumptions through domestic law.

Core Principles on Contractual Terms, Remuneration, Occupational Safety, and Social Security

Contractual Terms and Remuneration

Platform workers should be able to understand their contractual terms before starting work. Information that directly affects income—such as how remuneration is calculated, platform fees, deductions, payment timing, and the grounds for account restrictions—must be clear.

In particular, if the total displayed on the screen differs from the amount actually paid, workers should be able to separately identify taxes, fees, insurance premiums, or other deductions. Applicable minimum remuneration standards and collective agreements must also be observed.

Occupational Safety and Work Stoppages

Delivery and transport workers are exposed to traffic accidents and severe weather, while online workers may experience long waiting periods, repetitive tasks, and psychological strain. If an algorithm encourages rapid completion or pressures workers to accept tasks in dangerous situations, the technology’s design itself becomes an occupational safety risk.

States must therefore assess the risks of platform work and establish preventive measures. It is also important to ensure that workers are not disadvantaged solely because they avoided a serious and imminent danger.

Social Security

When work is spread across multiple platforms and short-term contracts, it becomes difficult to identify who is responsible for paying social insurance contributions and to determine income. The Convention sets a direction for improving coverage and administrative procedures so that platform workers are not excluded from social security systems because of their form of employment.

At the domestic implementation stage, the following issues become central.

• How to aggregate income earned through multiple platforms
• In what proportions the platform, worker, or both should bear insurance contributions
• How to distinguish occupational injuries from ordinary accidents
• Which country’s system should apply to online work provided across borders

Why Algorithmic Management Requires Human Oversight

Platform algorithms do not remain neutral recommendation tools. Automated dispatch, search visibility, rating calculations, remuneration adjustments, fraud detection, and account suspension can determine workers’ income and whether they can continue working.

Transparency does not necessarily mean disclosing the entire source code. The key is to explain in a way that workers and their representatives can understand which systems significantly affect working conditions, what information is used, and what consequences the decisions produce.

Human oversight must also not be a merely formal procedure in which a person simply approves an automated decision. For the procedure to provide meaningful redress, a person with the authority to change the decision must review the worker’s explanation and relevant records.

The Boundary Between Personal Data Protection and Workplace Surveillance

Platforms can collect large amounts of data, including location, login times, travel routes, customer ratings, messages, device information, and work-processing speed. Such data may be necessary for business operations, but it also carries the risk of being used for excessive surveillance, discriminatory inferences, or detecting union activity.

The necessary principles are as follows.

• Collect only data necessary for a legitimate purpose directly related to performing the work.
• Inform workers what data is collected, why it is collected, and with whom it is shared.
• Allow workers to access data about themselves and correct inaccurate information.
• Restrict excessive inferences and surveillance involving sensitive information or private matters.
• Examine the quality of data used in automated decisions and its potential for discrimination.
• Establish retention standards to prevent data from being stored indefinitely after contract termination.

Personal data protection and algorithmic transparency are not separate issues. If incorrect location records or customer ratings are entered into an account-suspension model, the right to correct data and the right to challenge automated decisions must operate together.

Why Informal Employment, Care, and the Social Economy Are Addressed Together

The Avilés Declaration does not treat platform work solely as a separate issue of technology regulation. In many Latin American countries, informal work that is not adequately protected by social insurance and labor law is a major policy issue. As platforms digitize existing informal services, they may create transaction records, but they may also create a new form of informalization that shifts responsibility onto individuals.

Care and domestic services are also important points of connection. Platform-based matching for care can improve accessibility for users, but may also exacerbate low pay, irregular hours, gender disparities, and safety problems. This is why care needs to be viewed not simply as an intermediary service, but as a matter of social and labor policy.

The social and solidarity economy includes models such as cooperatives, mutual organizations, and social enterprises in which workers and local communities participate in operations. The Avilés Declaration emphasizes this area in order to diversify the ownership and decision-making structures of platforms themselves and explore alternatives for sharing the benefits of digital transformation with workers.

Actual Rights Depend on Ratification and Incorporation into Domestic Law

Adoption of the Convention, national ratification, and domestic implementation are separate stages.

1. The Convention is adopted by the International Labour Conference.
2. Each member state submits the Convention to its competent national authorities and considers whether to ratify it.
3. Ratifying states align their laws and administrative systems with the date on which the Convention enters into force for that country.
4. The rules are enforced through labor inspection, social insurance, dispute resolution, and judicial procedures.
5. The ILO supervisory system reviews implementation by ratifying states.

Therefore, whether a worker can currently challenge an account suspension or demand social insurance coverage depends on the worker’s place of residence, place of work, contractual counterparty, the platform’s location, and the applicable country’s current law. The Convention can serve as a standard for interpreting and improving domestic rights, but it does not automatically create remedies that do not yet exist.

The Avilés Declaration likewise will not lead to direct changes in rights without follow-up legislation, budgets, and administrative plans. After the November 2026 summit, it will be necessary to examine not only whether the joint declaration is reaffirmed, but also whether a specific schedule, responsible institutions, and evaluation indicators are presented.

Evidence and Auditability That Determine Whether the Rules Succeed

For platform regulation to work in practice, records that make it possible to reconstruct decisions are needed in addition to declarations of rights. This is a particularly important practical task when translating the Convention into domestic law and system design.

Platforms need to be designed to retain the following records for an appropriate period and make them available for review in the event of a dispute.

• The time when work was offered, accepted, or rejected, and the assignment rules applied
• Calculations of remuneration, surcharges, fees, and deductions
• Reasons for changes to ratings and account restrictions
• Key input data and model versions used in automated decisions
• The human reviewer’s judgment, whether the decision was changed, and processing time
• Safety-related reports and the actions taken in response

Without records, platforms have difficulty explaining the legitimacy of their decisions, and workers have difficulty proving errors or discrimination. Conversely, recording every action without limits may constitute excessive surveillance, so purpose limitations, access rights, retention periods, and deletion standards must be established together.

Auditability is more complex for cross-border online platforms because workers, clients, platform entities, and servers may be located in different countries. Even if the Convention provides common principles, issues involving jurisdiction, applicable law, and information exchange among supervisory authorities must be resolved further through domestic law and international cooperation.

Issues to Monitor Going Forward

• Which countries ratify Convention No. 193 and when it enters into force for each country
• How domestic criteria for distinguishing employees from independent contractors change
• To what extent remuneration and social insurance obligations apply to all platform workers
• Whether meaningful human review procedures are introduced for account suspensions and automated dispatch
• Whether worker representatives can participate in the introduction and modification of algorithms
• How applicable law and supervisory responsibility for cross-border online work will be determined
• Whether the Avilés Declaration leads to specific regional projects after the November 2026 summit

Because the number of ratifications and country-specific entry-into-force dates may continue to change, the latest status should be checked in the ILO’s official convention and ratification records.