Democracy Happens when Workers Have a Voice

Democracy Happens when Workers Have a Voice

Jul 30, 2025

At the 2025 International Labor Conference (ILC), which took place June 2-14, the Solidarity Center and its partners showcased what happens when workers join together: they speak up and fight for better jobs—and a better world. 

The ILC, the annual meeting of the International Labor Organization (ILO), brings together worker, employer and government representatives to debate policy, make decisions and negotiate new international labor standards to promote decent work. 

As a result of our unique partnerships with working people and unions from around the world, workers assumed an active role throughout the ILC conference, building on our guiding principle that if working people have the freedom to organize and bargain, they will build more just, inclusive and democratic societies.

With Solidarity Center, Platform Workers Shape a Global Treaty 

In Chile, Solidarity Center delegate Angelica Salgado Delgadillo heads the Cornershop Union of Uber and serves as a national councilor in the Central Unitaria de Trabajadoras y Trabajadores (CUT). Credit: Solidarity Center

Between 154 million and 435 million workers have online jobs around the world. While platform work is associated with ride hailing and delivery, a broad range of digital platform work is now happening through apps and websites. 

A new ILAW Network publication, Taken for a Ride 3 – Lost in a Crowd: How Crowdworkers Are Denied Their Rights at Work, looks at how content moderators, software programmers and other digital platform workers engage in data-related tasks and yet receive no basic workplace rights.

Following years of research and advocacy for the development of a global treaty promoting decent work for app-based workers, led in part by the Solidarity Center’s ILAW Network, the ILO began the process to negotiate a first-ever Convention establishing decent work for platform workers worldwide. (Conventions are legally binding international treaties that may be ratified by member countries.) 

“The Solidarity Center Rule of Law team participated actively in the negotiation for a new standard addressing decent work on digital labor platforms, while the Solidarity Center’s Organizing Department coordinated with national platform workers unions to facilitate their participation in the work of the committee,” said Jeffrey Vogt, Solidarity Center Rule of Law director, who also leads the Center’s International Lawyers Assisting Workers (ILAW) Network.

Worker delegates connected with their governments to win support and improvements in an international treaty on the rights of platform workers. Front from left: Charith Attanapola, Sri Lanka; Carina Trindade, Brazil. Rear from left: Philip Aryeh, Ghana; Mophat Okinyi, Kenya. Credit: Solidarity Center

To develop a Convention, workers, employers and government members meet in Geneva to debate and draft its content, and the June conference was the first of two such meetings. Together with digital app-based workers from seven countries, Brazil, Chile, Ghana, Kenya, India, Mexico and Sri Lanka, the Solidarity Center efforts were key to ensuring the proposed Convention and its Recommendations represented workers’ real-life experiences and concerns.

Months before the June ILC met to consider Convention proposals, Solidarity Center worked closely with the platform worker delegates, ensuring they were part of every step—contributing to the ILC’s multiple draft reports, advocating with lawmakers and engaging in training to hone their messages. 

“By bringing together workers from multiple regions, the ILC served as a powerful space for South-South exchange,” said Kruskaya Hidalgo Cordero, Solidarity Center field organizing specialist. “Delegates strengthened trust, shared strategies and discussed common challenges such as ensuring labor standards cover digital platform workers.”

Building Worker Power, Democracy

With input into creating the latest draft, the involvement of the Solidarity Center conference delegates was key in discussions and in developing the most recent outline. 

Closely coordinating with their unions at the conference, worker delegates provided feedback and recommendations to their government represetatives—who in turn often took supportive positions, raising key points during negotiations and in some cases, adjusting their votes. 

Sergio Guerrero from Mexico was among seven platform workers collaborating with the Solidarity Center to ensure decent work in the gig economy. Credit: Solidarity Center

The result, “Decent Work in the Platform Economy,” was a commitment to a Convention and Recommendation at the end of the process, as well as negotiated definitions and some initial language on the rights of workers to obtain information on automated systems. The platform workers will continue to hone and refine drafts throughout the year, with a final Convention and Recommendation likely adopted at the next ILC in June 2026.

Through ILC participation, the Solidarity Center enabled strong worker power—and worker democracy. Going forward, as part of the Organizing Department’s global platform and broader strategy on platform work, Solidarity Center will create a dedicated space for cross-regional collaboration. Digital app-based workers will take part in a series of virtual exchanges where they will share organizing strategies—strengthening bonds and coordination across regions.

Digital app-based driver, Shaik Salauddin from India, part of the Solidarity Center delegation, frequently reaches out in social media through his union. Credit: Solidarity Center

Creating international connections at the ILC, where digital app-based workers initiated relationships with key global allies , expands connections not only for their organizing networks but also embeds platform worker issues more firmly within global union agendas.

“These interactions deepened the foundation for a worker-led international network capable of sustained collaboration beyond ILC spaces,” said Hidalgo Cordero.

Including Workers’ Voice 

To ensure that workers are in the conversations around the informal economy, one Solidarity Center strategy included collaboration with Saida Ouaid, a member of the Democratic Confederation of Labor (CDT) in Morocco.

Ouaid represents agricultural workers, who are among the two billion people globally supporting themselves and their families in the informal economy—including street vendors, domestic workers and tuk-tuk drivers. These workers are not covered by “formal” economy protections, such as job safety and health or health care.

Ouaid actively participated in the ILC general discussion Addressing Informality and Promoting the Transition to Formality for Decent Work to reflect on progress made since the adoption of ILO Recommendation 204 and what else is needed to advance the transition to formality, in recognition that informality remains high.

“Being present gave me the opportunity to voice my organization’s position, which is the urgent need to improve the conditions of informal economy workers and to integrate them into a formal economy that meets the standards of decent work and dignified living,” she said.

The Solidarity Center also provided materials to union partners who sought to participate in the ILC discussions, including several from around Africa. And, the Solidarity Center coordinated positions and priorities with the International Domestic Workers Federation (IDWF), UNI Global and Women in Informal Employment Globalizing & Organizing (WIEGO), key to its efforts to build long-term alliances with global unions and other allies.

Solidarity Center delegate Saida Ouaid, a member of the Democratic Confederation of Labor in Morocco, pushed to improve conditions for 2 billion workers such as those in agriculture and street vending who are in the informal economy. Courtesy Saida Ouaid

Because working people and their union representative such as Ouaid were a key part of the discussions, they pushed back employer attempts to restrict union membership and collective bargaining to formal workers in accordance with national laws. Ultimately, the final document represents the success of working people in upholding the freedom to form unions and the right to collectively bargain as a right for “all workers” as essential for transitioning to inclusion in fundamental labor rights. 

Including workers’ democratic freedom to form unions and bargain together recognizes the Solidarity Center’s core principle that unions are the democratic institutions of the working class that allow working people to stand together, speak up and bargain not only for better jobs, but for a better world. 

“Attending this session was a rich and meaningful experience, through the contributions, testimonies and shared experiences of trade unions, during both the Workers’ Group meetings and the general sessions,” said Ouaid.

 

Workers’ Succeeded in Adding Key Rights 

Working in agriculture, as a street vendor or in other jobs in the informal economy increases people’s vulnerability that typically cannot be addressed by a country’s basic labor protections. Workers at the conference were key to the adoption of new language on the necessity of employer and government accountability and creates an environment for transitioning to jobs in the formal economy that lead to worker protections.

Workers’ involvement also shaped the outcomes document so that it represents their lived experiences and the necessity for safe working conditions, by

  • Acknowledging the importance of a safe and healthy working environment to decent work and
  • Recognizing the role that trafficking, exploitation, stigmatization and harassment in hindering formalization efforts.

“There were a number of important provisions proposed by the workers’ group that were able to ensure the rights of informal economy workers in the final outcomes,” said Erin Radford, senior specialist in Solidarity Center’s Global Worker Empowerment Department.

“In other cases, the workers’ group was successful in eliminating harmful amendments proposed by the employers’ group or governments or in reducing the harm of the amendments. In particular, it was important to ensure nothing in these outcomes would undermine or weaken the 2015 document.”

See all the texts adopted in the June 2025 conference: Texts adopted by the International Labor Conference at its 113th Session.

Nigeria Drivers Form Country’s First App-Based Union

Nigeria Drivers Form Country’s First App-Based Union

Feb 7, 2023

 

Drivers in Nigeria won the country’s first union covering platform-based workers, a victory that shows it is possible for “unions to organize workers in the gig economy,” says Ayoade Ibrahim, secretary general of the Amalgamated Union of App-Based Transport Workers of Nigeria (AUATWN).

Nigeria, Platform Workers Win Union Recognition, AUATWN, Solidarity Center, app-based workers, gig economy

Platform workers in Nigeria join with Labor Ministry officials to finalize recognition of their union, AUATWN. Credit: AUATWN

The Ministry of Labor’s recognition of AUATWN empowers it to have a say in determining the terms and conditions of drivers working for Uber, Bolt and other app-based transportation companies in the country, and covers drivers who deliver food and passengers or engage in other services. The union worked with the Nigeria Labor Congress throughout the campaign for recognition.

In a statement approving AUATWN as union representative of app-based workers last week, the Labor Ministry pointed out that while the freedom to form unions and collectively bargain are internationally protected rights, workers in the informal sector, such as app-based workers, often are not included.

“Today, we are breaking new ground with those in the informal sector who are employing themselves,” the Labor Ministry said. Some 80 percent of Nigerians work in informal sector, as the lack of good jobs—the official unemployment rate is 33 percent, with youth unemployment at 43 percent—leaves workers with few options beyond selling goods in the market, domestic work or taxi driving.

In Nigeria, as in countries around the world, app-based drivers often must work long hours to support themselves and pay for expenses like vehicle maintenance, insurance and car leasing. Excessive hours lead to accidents, says Ayoade.

“I work 15 to 18 hours a day. Long hours working is actually not safe for drivers,” says Ayobami Lawal, a platform driver in Lagos. “That is why you see in the news that the driver had an accident. It is because of fatigue, because there is no time to rest.” Drivers also risk being assaulted and even killed on the job, as platform companies do not screen riders. By contrast, riders have access to drivers’ name and personal phone numbers.

In April 2021, platform drivers and their associations in Nigeria went on strike, demanding that Uber and Bolt raise trip fares to make up for the increased cost of gas and vehicle parts. They also launched a class action suit in 2021 against Uber and Bolt, seeking unpaid overtime and holiday pay, pensions and union recognition. Following the protests, Uber increased fare costs on UberX rides and UberX Share in Lagos, a move that did little to improve drivers’ pay and nothing to improve conditions.

‘We Must Be United’

App-based drivers in Nigeria began seeking union recognition in 2017, after drivers’ income was slashed by 40 percent, says Ayoade, a father of three who that year was forced to drive 10-hour days to make the same income he had previously earned for fewer hours. When Uber and Bolt first launched, drivers were paid enough to work without putting in long hours. But the companies’ price wars to lure passengers and increased driver fees, including commissions up to 25 percent per rider, slashed driver pay.  

As the process to register a union with the government dragged, platform worker associations made key gains in mobilizing workers through Facebook, WhatsApp and, most recently, Telegram. The campaign also includes legal action and lobbying Parliament to extend labor laws and social protections to workers in the informal sector.

Three worker associations engaged in the campaign—the National Union of Professional App-based Transport Workers (NUPA-BTW), the Professional E-hailing Drivers and Private Owners Association of Nigeria (PEDPAN) and the National Coalition of Ride-Sharing Partners (NACORP)—last year joined together to form AUATWN.

“We cannot go to war with a divided mind,” says Ayoade. We must be united before we can achieve. The fact that we are united now, we are fierce. We’re trying to involve everybody.”

App-Based Workers Making Gains Worldwide

Unions face unique challenges organizing app-based workers, but by mobilizing members through online apps, unions also have the ability to involve more workers in meetings, education and other opportunities.

“Everybody is included,” says Ayoade. “It’s a more democratic process. We have delegates for unit leadership. If the delegates can’t join for a physical meeting, they can join anywhere.”

Members’ questions can be quickly answered on social platforms and the union operation is more transparent. For instance, he says, members “will see how the money to the union is moving from the app to the account. Every member knows how the money will be used.”

Platform workers in countries worldwide are joining together to better wages, job safety and other fundamental rights guaranteed by international laws. In Kyrgyzstan, gig workers at Yandex Go formed a union and won better wages, while a new report finds that workers on digital platform companies who are pursuing their rights at work through courts and legislation are making significant gains, especially in Europe and Latin America. The Solidarity Center is part of a broad-based movement in dozens of countries to help app-based drivers and other informal sector workers come together. Members of the International Lawyers Assisting Workers Network (ILAW), a Solidarity Center project, have assisted platform workers in many of these cases.

While celebrating the new union, Ayoade also is mindful of the cost some workers paid for a lack of decent work.

“Some of the people we started together with in this campaign, they lost their life along the line,” he says. The lack of insurance or social benefits mean that if drivers are attacked or robbed or even die on the job, they and their family are left all on their own. “They have children, they have parents, who received nothing,” he says.

Although he is bullied and even threatened for his work, Ayoade says such tactics only make him see his efforts are effective. “God gave me the opportunity to help people in this struggle. I am doing something that is improving people’s lives.”