The Brazilian government, together with the workers’ caucus, both nationally and internationally, played an important role in the approval of an international convention that guarantees the rights of rideshare and delivery appworkers, or those working on digital platforms. The measure approved last Wednesday (5) by the International Labor Organization (ILO) was the first stage in approving legal instruments. The final text of the Convention and Recommendation will be analyzed at the next ILO Conference, in 2026.
On Wednesday evening, the ILO’s Normative Committee on Decent Work in the Platform Economy approved the drafting of an international convention, accompanied by a recommendation, aimed at regulating work on digital platforms. It was endorsed by 65 countries, together with the workers’ side, against 16 countries and the employers’ side.
“We, the Brazilian delegation, and the Brazilian government, from the moment we arrived here, were committed to the idea that the ILO resolution on this issue of apps and platforms should be a convention and not – as employers in some of the big countries like the United States, China and Japan wanted – just a recommendation,” Gilberto Carvalho, National Secretary for Popular Economy and Solidarity at the Ministry of Labor and Employment, told Brasil de Fato.
“It was a tough fight; there were three days of discussion. We allied ourselves, of course, with the Latin American countries (most of them, at least). Above all, we allied ourselves with Uruguay, Chile, Mexico and Colombia, and the European community joined us, as well as Africa. It was this joint effort that gave us victory,” he added.
For Eymard Loguercio, from the National Secretariat for Legal Affairs at CUT Brazil, “the importance of establishing a convention is that we will have a stronger normative instrument.”
“Now that we have defined that it will be a convention followed by a recommendation, we will now have to write the text of that convention. And then we will fight a new battle, because those countries that are against it will certainly come – as has already happened today in the session – with a discussion about the terms, the concepts, what a platform is, what work is, what the rights of these workers, these people are.”
Since 2023, the ministry has been seeking to protect the labor rights of so-called app workers, alongside both workers and entrepreneurs “to reach an agreement on regulation – and we have made a lot of progress,” said Carvalho.
“In the case of rideshare drivers, we reached a final agreement. The bill has been at a standstill for a year and that’s why Minister Marinho approached the Speaker of the House, Hugo Mota, and he promised to create a special committee to get the bill advancing again.”
Fábio Tibiriçá Bon, legal advisor to the CUT’s Secretariat for International Relations, comments that “this has been seven years in the making, starting with a very tough meeting of international experts, which didn’t even manage to bring any conclusions to the ILO.”
“That event was followed by countless debates in the ILO Governing Body, until it was possible to include in the International Labor Conference, which takes place every year, a specific agenda item: to build an international labor standard. And we want it to be comprehensive enough to cover all workers in the world, whether they are employed or self-employed.”
“The differentiation that needs to be made effectively between employed and self-employed workers will be in the recommendation, which is an instrument presenting guidelines a little more objective in terms of specificity compared to the convention. It was a great first victory, but the war continues,” says Bon.
