Jun 3, 2025
When Enoch Gyaesayor logs into a digital app each day to begin picking up passengers and drive around Accra, Ghana, he hopes to get a few hour-long trips where he can be paid the daily top amount from Mondays to Fridays. After paying the company’s commission and job-related expenses, he says he makes 150 cedis ($14.64).
Enoch Gyaesayor, an app-based driver in Ghana, connected platform workers together in a union to build strength to improve working conditions.
But most of the time, Gyaesayor and thousands of other digital app drivers and riders are paid even less, and often work up to 16 hours a day, even sleeping in their vehicles to save petrol money going home and to be ready to start working again as quickly as possible. Higher pay on weekends does not reduce the amount of time they must work.
“There is no ‘off’ day for the driver,” Gyaesayor says, noting that he works seven days a week to support himself and his family.
In Ghana and in countries around the world, the Solidarity Center is building strength with platform workers to create a broad-based, global movement in which app-based workers join together to assert their rights, protect their lives and improve working conditions. Unions and worker organizations are making democracy real in workplaces, legislatures and global forums.
Digital Platform Work: A Growing Industry that Undercuts Labor Rights
A rapidly exploding industry, digital platform work now employs between 154 million and 435 million workers in online jobs. While often seen as a flexible job arrangement, digital app-based work is a growing business model that systematically undercuts labor rights and protections and shifts the responsibility of costs to workers.
With support by the Solidarity Center and the CGTP, digital platform drivers formed a union to collectively push for decent work and are now at the ILO in Geneva urging passage of a treaty improving work for platform workers worldwide.
Around the world, consumers depend on digital platform workers—requesting rides from Uber or Bolt, ordering meals from Zomato, receiving groceries delivered from Glovo, or viewing content on a social media platform. The online platform acts as an intermediary between the worker and the employer. For most workers, these jobs are not a “side gig”–they are full-time work.
Yet app-based workers in Ghana and in most countries worldwide are defined as “independent contractors,” and so not covered by national labor laws, such as a country’s minimum wage.
Some 3 billion consumers used online food delivery service—groceries and meals—in 2024. Although global food delivery alone was an estimated $380.43 billion in 2024, the workers transporting the food, driving passengers and moderating online content receive little pay and no safe and healthy working conditions.
Joining Together to Improve Job Conditions
Gyaesayor and other platform workers in Ghana say their top concern is to decrease the percentage of the commission app-based companies require drivers to pay. Uber takes 35 percent from workers’ pay; Bolt, 27.5 percent and Yango up to 25 percent.
The commission fee is only a portion of what workers must pay. With available cars scarce in Ghana, some companies “rent” cars to drivers, adding to a worker’s expense, which also includes mobile phone data, petrol and repairs.
Delivery drivers say they suffer from exhausting workdays, low pay and poor health conditions. Credit: Paloma Luna
Algorithms, which often incorrectly determine distance, time and types of trips offered, further decrease pay. Workers operate at the will of the algorithm and have little recourse to find out why they are locked out of jobs or why kilometers are incorrectly calculated.
“There is a lot of uncertainty and lack of consistency when it comes to rides, how much you will get paid, and so on,” he says.
Gyaesayor, now general secretary of the Digital Transport Workers Union (DTWU), began joining together digital app workers by talking with platform drivers at car parks and shopping malls, urging them to come together to improve their conditions. Several associations representing couriers and other digital workers formed a small association in the Accra and Ashanti regions, By 2023, they created DTWU with a broader reach, joining the Ghana Trades Union Congress (GTUC).
Improve Working Conditions by Joining Together
The digital app union in Ghana, which includes car and bicycle drivers and couriers, is among dozens of platform worker unions around the world, with workers joining together to achieve key goals, including:
- Minimum wage standards.
- Safe working environments.
- Basic social protections such as annual leave, sick leave and retirement benefits.
- Labor law coverage in their countries grants them the same rights as all workers.
To gain these basic rights, workers are engaging in legal action to win unpaid wages, receive compensation for job-related injuries and establish safe working conditions. And, they are mobilizing to improve national and local laws.
Food delivery riders improved pay at FoodPanda in Cebu, Philippines, part of platform workers’ efforts to assert their rights, protect their lives and improve working conditions.
across the globe.
Earlier this year in Mexico, app-based workers campaigned for — and won! — legislative reform that recognizes them as workers and provides access to accident insurance, pensions, maternity leave and company profits. In the Philippines, food delivery riders are improving benefits around the islands. In Cebu, Foodpanda drivers will receive a base fare of 55 pesos (94 cents) and the company will recognize them as employees.
Now, the workers are joining together to take their demands internationally.
Platform Workers Take Global Action
This week, platform work will be formally addressed for the first time on a global stage. At an International Labor Organization (ILO) conference in Geneva, digital app workers and representatives from business and governments are shaping a new international treaty, Realizing Decent Worker in the Platform Economy.
At an ILO conference in Geneva, digital app workers and representatives from business and governments are shaping a new international treaty to ensure decent work for platform workers around the globe.
Digital app workers have been crafting content that delegates will consider, and joining meetings with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and taking part in a six-day regional workshop in Togo by the ITUC-Africa. Platform workers also are involved in legislative strategies, meeting with their government representatives in advance of the conference.
Charith Attanapola, an app driver in Sri Lanka, met with the country’s minister of labor to convey platform workers’ challenges and discuss ways the government can improve working conditions.
“One of the key takeaways from our discussion was the government’s openness to ensuring decent work across all labor sectors, including app-based transport workers and delivery personnel,” says Attanapola.
Attanapola is part of the Solidarity Center delegation, which includes workers from Brazil, Chile, Ghana, India, Kenya and Mexico. As these workers testify, negotiate and help shape international labor standards that reflect the reality of their work and their demands, they understand the urgency in ensuring how jobs are shaped will determine the future.
In Ghana, where youth unemployment improved from 16.3 percent in 2000 to 5.4 percent in 2024, Gyaesayor knows that gain can be sustained only if decent work is available.
“Platform work has given employment to the majority of the youth; yet those of us who are working are being used like slaves, we get paid barely any salary,” says Gyaesayor. “The government must listen to the union, or things will get much worse; a lot of youth are going to be unemployed.”
May 28, 2025
Thousands of garment workers seeking to boost a base daily pay of $2.47 (5,200 kyats) stood strong throughout a multi-day strike in Yangon, Myanmar, winning an agreement that increases pay and bonuses.
Marching along the sidewalk outside the factory chanting “daily wage, annual bonus, raise it, raise it,” and “the daily wage you pay is not enough,” striking garment workers negotiated a new wage they say will make it easier to purchase rice and cooking oil.
The agreement, effective in June and covering 6,269 workers, increases the base pay to $2.76 (5,800 kyats), boosts the additional daily allowance to $1.81 (3,800 kyats) from 95 cents (2,000 kyats) and a 19 cent (400 kyats) allowance. Garment workers also will receive an increase in overtime pay and attendance bonus pay.
With Collective Action, Workers Achieve Success
Unable to support themselves on their wages, some 4,000 workers at the Tsang Yih Co., factory went on strike May 14, and were joined by thousands more the next day. Workers remained on strike despite management threats to fire leaders. On May 17, management said the factory, which supplies Adidas, can dismiss them for three consecutive days of absence and told striking workers the company would bring in military soldiers and police.
The garment workers, assisted in their effort for better pay by the Federation of General Workers of Myanmar (FGWM), a Solidarity Center partner, continued the worker action, defying the risks involved in the country. In February 2021, a military coup took power, killing thousands of people and imprisoning many more, with union leaders especially targeted.
After management created a contract without workers’ consent that did not reflect their list of demands, the garment workers remained united in collective action. With military and police trucks at the factory’s entrance on May 19, 6,000 workers rallied inside the factory compound, chanting that the signatures on the “agreement” did not reflect their wishes.
When the Myanmar Labor Minister and other representatives came to the factory urging workers to return to the job, workers say the messages indicated force would be used to disperse them if they refused to resume work.
But with strength through collective action, the garment workers held strong, succeeding in negotiating a contract that benefited them and their families.
Nov 15, 2024
Nearly 2,000 workers at textile factories in Casablanca, Morocco, now can receive decent pay, health care protection and a voice on the job after joining the Moroccan Workers’ Union (UMT) and the federation of textile workers.
“We joined the union primarily to preserve our dignity, which some managers have trampled on,” said one worker, who voted for the union. (Names are not used to protect workers’ privacy.)
All 605 workers in three factories in Casablanca and the majority of the more than 1,000 workers in four additional factories in the area’s large textile industry joined the union.
With a union, workers at textile factories are able to address workplace safety and GBVH. Credit: Hicham Ahmaddouh
Without a union, said one worker, “we couldn’t find solutions to our issues or secure our legal rights, which the company has neglected for more than five years.”
Workers at the leather, textiles, and ready-made garment factories are involved in leather production, sewing, dyeing, supplies and garment manufacturing. They say they often were not paid wages, and received insufficient compensation when often required to work overtime—or engage in fewer hours than specified by the government.
“Wage payments are often delayed, and we only receive them after striking and protesting,” one worker stated when describing conditions before the union representation.
Another worker described being “required to work up to 240 hours a month instead of the legal 191, which should qualify as overtime, yet we receive no compensation.”
Developing Outreach
Achieving success in mobilizing and assisting textile workers to form unions was part of a two-year campaign involving Solidarity Center support in providing data and analysis of key employers, supply chains and other information.
Together with the UMT, the Solidarity Center trained a team led by two women and one man to head up the organizing drive. Over the past year, the team conducted one-on-one outreach at the factories, located in a difficult to access industrial zone. They met with company officials, organized offsite outreach meetings and collected worker stories about their needs and challenges in accessing their fundamental rights.
The outreach effort is essential for expanding the union’s efforts to broaden worker rights.
“Organizing textile workers is crucial to strengthening the union’s capacity to advocate for workers’ rights, secure demands and build solidarity within the Moroccan Labor Union and the National Union of Textile, Leather, and Ready-Made Garment Workers,” said Al-Arabi Hamouk, general secretary of the National Federation of Textile, Leather and Ready-Made Garment Workers.
Textile workers sought improved occupational health and safety in the factories and wanted to ensure the companies’ adherence to labor laws and payment to the country’s social protection fund
“Since 2023, we have been deprived of health coverage because the company hasn’t paid the required contributions, even though they are deducted from our wages,” one worker said.
By forming a union, abuses such as violence and harassment could be addressed, according to a factory worker.
She said in the past, workers suffered “from verbal and sexual harassment by some managers, as well as arbitrary individual and collective dismissals when demand decreases or when we ask for our legal rights.”
“The Solidarity Center played a critical role in the success of the campaign within the textile sector,” said Hamouk. “The organizing team demonstrated the ability to strategize, and address challenges.”
Assisting textile workers in forming unions moves forward their ability to achieve decent wages, safe workplaces and essential health care coverage—and advances their democratic rights to freely form unions.
Said one union member: “We achieved dignity and the freedom to associate, which was previously denied.”
Aug 20, 2024
With the unexpected shift in Bangladesh political leadership, garment workers say they are hopeful but cautious about the effect on their wages, working conditions and fundamental civil rights, such as the freedom to form unions.
“We hope something positive will happen. However, after the fall of the government, some factories … were prevented from opening in some places,” one factory-level union representative* told the Solidarity Center. “It should not happen.”
After weeks of peaceful student protest were met with deadly government suppression, long-term Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was forced to flee the country on August 4. Students were rallying against a government jobs quota system granting coveted decent work opportunities to family veterans of the 1971 Bangladesh war for independence. More than 600 protestors have been killed.
The economy of Bangladesh, the world’s second-largest garment exporter, depends on garment factories, but producers say customers are concerned about violence and disruption. In 2023, 4 million garment workers contributed 85 percent of Bangladesh’s $55 billion in annual exports.
The recent disruptions, including a government internet shutdown, closed factories, but some garment workers were back to work August 7.
“We only wish our garment sector to thrive,” another worker said. “Our hope is all the factories remain open.”
Lack of Union Freedom Represses Decent Wages, Work
Government repression against workers seeking to form and join unions has prevented garment workers from achieving the living wages and safe working conditions they have sought to achieve, workers say.
With a new government, garment workers seek a crucial change: The ability to freely exert their internationally recognized freedom to form independent unions and bargain collectively for wages and working conditions.
“We want to be able to exercise our trade union rights to the fullest with no pressure from anybody,” says one union leader, who has received threats for efforts to stand up for worker rights.
Although most factories have resumed production, garment workers say their monthly wage still must be increased.
“Many families live on the income of garment workers,” said the union representative.
While many garment workers received wages in July, union leaders tell Solidarity Center that in many other factories, especially those without unions, workers were not paid. In Gazipur, ready-made garments and textile factories demanded their due payment.
Last fall, garment workers who held protests for higher wages were also brutally repressed. The government raised wages to $113 a month, an amount union leaders say does not cover the cost of living, and about half of what workers sought. Multiple labor organizations, including the Industrial Bangladesh Council and Garments Sramik Parishad, said garment workers’ monthly minimum wage must be at least Tk 23,000 a month ($195.81).
Workers said last year’s wage revision did not cover basic needs as “the prices of daily commodities have skyrocketed.” One garment worker who has been on the job for 15 years said, “Usually, our wage is revised every five years. We expect the new government to do that in three years. It will be really beneficial for garment workers.”
* All workers interviewed for this story asked to remain anonymous.
