Jan 8, 2025
In a landmark victory for app-based food delivery riders in the Philippines, members of the Foodpanda Cebu chapter, have successfully defended their right to fair compensation. The National Labor Relations Commission (NLRC) upheld its previous decision to reinstate a 2018-2020 compensation plan that included a base fare of 55 pesos (94 cents) and incentives, and recognition of the employer-employee relationship between riders and the company.
Foodpanda appealed the initial decision, which the riders’ union, RIDERS-Sentro, won in September 2024. While the NLRC modified the labor arbiter’s ruling, it ultimately awarded 5.7 million pesos ( about $98,000) to the 18 riders involved in the lawsuit.
The union hopes this precedent will benefit riders across the country. Inspired by this win, union chapters in Bulacan, Iloilo and Urdaneta filed wage theft cases in December.
RIDERS-Sentro continues to advocate for improved working conditions for delivery riders. Its ongoing campaign focuses on securing guaranteed income and comprehensive insurance for all riders.
Jan 6, 2025
App-based delivery drivers and drivers paid the minimum wage in Mexico celebrated the holidays with new legislative reform that recognizes them as workers and ensures their access to social security, accident insurance, pensions, maternity leave, company profits and a Christmas (holiday) bonus.
App-based delivery drivers and drivers paid the minimum wage in Mexico are now recognized as workers and have access to social security, accident insurance, pensions, maternity leave and company profits. Credit: UNTA
The law, introduced by Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum on October 15, passed with full approval by the lower house and the Senate, which voted in December. It recognizes gig workers as employees, entitled to worker benefits and protections under Mexican law.
Some 658,000 workers are employed across Mexico on digital platforms, with 41 percent earning above the minimum wage. The National Union of App Workers (Unión Nacional de Trabajadores por Aplicación, UNTA) campaigned for the new law, taking a key role in urging its passage. Because of its advocacy, up to 2.5 million workers, according to Mexico’s government, will now have access to important social protections and benefits.
Mexico app-based drivers took part in a media conference as part of the campaign to pass a landmark law covering platform workers. Credit: Rubén Piña
In a media conference with its partner, the Solidarity Center, UNTA members expressed support for the regulation and also highlighted areas for improvement, such as recognizing connection time as part of total work hours. UNTA is an affiliate of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) and part of its Latin American Platform Workers’ Network.
“This reform reaffirms what we have been saying for years: We are workers,” says the General Secretary of UNTA, Sergio Guerrero. “And after years of hard struggle, this historic achievement contributes to the dignity of digital workers in Mexico, Latin America and the world.”
Ensuring Decent Work for App-Based Jobs
With few formal economy jobs available, workers worldwide are turning to the platform-based economy to support themselves and their families. While the rapid increase in app-based jobs offers millions of workers additional avenues to earn money, it also creates new opportunities for employer exploitation through low wages, lack of health care and an absence of job safety.
According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), digital platforms have created new opportunities and blurred the labor relationship between employers and workers. As a result, the digital platform work model does not adhere to standards of decent work, or fundamental ILO treaties (“conventions”), especially those on freedom of association, collective bargaining and discrimination in employment and occupation. Digital platform workers often earn low wages and lack access to social protections, minimum wage protections, employment benefits such as paid vacation and opportunities for collective bargaining.
App-based drivers in Mexico waged multiple rallies in support of decent work. Credit: Iván Stephens
As in Mexico, app-based workers who drive motorbikes, bicycles and cars to deliver food and transport passengers receive no paid sick leave or vacation. They work long hours and rush between deliveries, risking their safety because if they do not, the app—via the company—punishes them by lowering pay. When drivers or deliverers are injured, they receive no compensation from their employers.
In Mexico, the law now addresses such issues, ensuring that workers have the flexibility to define their own working hours and requiring the employer—such as Didi, Rappi and Uber—to register workers in the nation’s social security program, covering occupational risks and providing access to health and housing benefits. Companies are required to register contracts with the government, which must detail working hours, income and algorithmic management rules.
Further addressing what workers describe as the company’s frequent abuse through algorithms, the law prohibits companies from charging for the use of the platform and obliges them to issue detailed payment receipts and respect digital disconnection outside working hours. It prohibits companies from manipulating workers’ income to avoid their classification as dependent on employers of digital platforms and blocks the collection of fees from workers for registration, use, separation or similar concepts related to the employment relationship.
In Mexico, digital companies now must guarantee the publication of algorithmic management policies and may not manipulate income to distort the employment relationship or carry out contractual simulations. The law also prohibits withholding of workers’ wages. The new law in Mexico is one of the most progressive in the world in regulating work through digital platforms, guaranteeing fundamental labor rights.
Dec 12, 2024
Shawna Bader-Blau, Executive Director, Solidarity Center:
“Millions of Saudi and migrant workers support the Saudi economy each year, and each year hundreds of thousands of them face severe labor rights abuses such as wage theft, health and safety violations (including heat stress from extreme temperatures), violence and harassment. We call on FIFA and corporations supporting the World Cup to ensure that Saudi Arabia adheres to all international labor standards for all workers in the Kingdom, and that workers receive full remedy for any violations.”
Read the full statement here.
Dec 11, 2024
Thousands of teachers rallied in Pristina on December 5 to demand that the government meet with them to resolve longstanding poor work conditions and unfair compensation. For more than two years, Kosovo’s Ministry of Education has refused to meet with Kosovo teachers’ union SBASHK or implement a long-delayed collective agreement that will improve working conditions and provide a dignified pay raise.
“By opposing a collective contract, [the minister] is also opposing education workers. When there is no dialogue, there is no democracy,” said SBASHK President Rrahman Jasharaj.
Three collective contracts that were signed previously were never fully implemented. The most recent, signed in 2021, was invalidated by the Ministry of Education in November 2022 with a promise of new negotiations, which have yet to materialize.
Teachers gathered at the Education Ministry to present a raft of demands, which included that the government recognize the sacredness of teachers’ work in educating future generations and meet with them. Teachers subsequently moved the rally to the Kosovo Assembly to further advocate for education workers and the children under their care.
The government’s refusal to meet with them, say teachers, is a cynical dismissal of their sacrifices in keeping children in school during the bloody Kosovo war and the COVID pandemic, even while they have helped support colleagues, schools, children and their families through the mental health struggles and economic challenges caused by both events.
During the 1998-1999 Kosovo war, SBASHK played a vital role in preserving education services. Today SBASHK advocates for better working conditions and fair salaries, safer schools and professional growth opportunities for teachers. A five-week 2022 teachers’ strike for a living wage in response to COVID pandemic and Ukraine war-related inflation earned teachers a significant salary increase that has yet to be implemented. Meanwhile, regional economic challenges continue to threaten teachers’ and their students’ well-being. Recent economic analysis of the West Balkans shows that inflation in 2022 had surged to a two-decade high, with food and energy prices skyrocketing and eroding the purchasing power of households.
“It’s unfortunate that education workers, who are among the most important in any society, have to resort to a protest to prompt their government to engage with them,” says Solidarity Center Southeastern Europe Country Program Director Steven McCloud.
“A fair collective agreement with teachers is essential for ensuring the highest quality of education for students,” he said.
Dec 9, 2024
A four-year, regional, health care rights campaign led by the Organization of Trade Unions of West Africa (OTUWA) is expanding its success and influence in the region with Sierra Leone’s Finance Minister last month announcing a 2 percent increase in the country’s budget allocation for the health sector, from 7 percent in 2024 to 9 percent in 2025.
“The Sierra Leone Labor Congress appreciates the increase as a success of our health care campaign,” says OTUWA Executive Secretary John Odah, while noting that Sierra Leone’s government has not met the 15 percent minimum annual budgetary health allocation to which African heads of state agreed in the landmark 2001 Abuja Declaration.
Like many countries in the region, in the context of mounting national debt, multinational tax dodging and illicit financial flows, Sierra Leone’s government is struggling to provide essential services to its citizens, including accessible health care.
Sierra Leone’s health care funding increase builds on the success of OTUWA’s “Health Care Is a Human Right” campaign this year in Nigeria, where the federal government in April announced a disbursement of almost $70 million to bolster the country’s health infrastructure.
Given that more than 80 percent of West Africa’s working people earn their living in poorly paid and uncertain informal-sector jobs, lack of access to state-provided health care or health insurance is placing an unfair financial burden on low‐income individuals and households, say unions. A United Nations report noted that 381 million people, or almost 5 percent of the world’s population, were pushed into extreme poverty in 2019 by out-of-pocket health expenditures.
OTUWA’s health care rights campaign unites West Africa’s unions in a fight for equal and fair health care access for all. Campaign participants, which include OTUWA affiliates and national health care unions, have been advocating since 2020 for the protection of health worker rights and effective, accessible health care for all with national and continent-wide African Union legislators and policymakers, including the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Parliament. An OTUWA survey of 700 health workers living in Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo provided a window into the region’s health-sector shortcomings and presented a raft of recommendations that included increased funding for the health care sector across the region. This year, the campaign expanded its influence through an alliance with Public Services International, a global union federation that represents 30 million workers in 154 countries and, to preserve public resources, added good governance to its demands.
“We celebrate with our Sierra Leonean brothers and sisters and will continue to support unions that are demanding more investment by governments in the health of their citizens,” says Solidarity Center Africa Regional Program Director Christopher Johnson.
OTUWA represents trade union national centers in the 15 West African countries comprising ECOWAS. None of West Africa’s signatory governments–required by ECOWAS Fundamental Principles to promote and protect human rights in accordance with the African Union (AU) Charter on Human and People’s Rights, including provision of social protections such as health care–are implementing the 15 percent minimum annual budgetary health allocation.
Dec 9, 2024
Gold miners in Colombia won their first-ever contract, one that included an annual 3.5 percent wage increase and coverage of all sick leave up to 180 days. The collective bargaining agreement, signed with international corporation Zijin Continental Gold, critically incorporates respect and protection of workers’ rights on the job.
“I’m proud to advocate for workers’ rights and benefits at the Zijin Continental Gold Company. That’s what we seek: to protect workers and ensure they and their families have a better quality of life,” says Sergio Alexander Moreno Moreno, president of Sintramienergética Seccional Buriticá. The union includes more than 450 members at the Buriticá branch and 4,000 members nationwide.
The miners endure difficult conditions with low pay and, over 15 years, had won several arbitration awards. With Solidarity Center support, workers reached the August agreement with the company through negotiation and joint dialogue with the government among representatives of governments, employers and workers on issues of common interest relating to economic and social policies.
The union also negotiated creation of a Labor Dialogue Committee to monitor the contract and ensure its compliance, an essential part of the agreement, says Daniel Esneider Valencia Duque, secretary of collective affairs and labor disputes.
The new contract for gold miners is key to establishing worker rights, says Sergio Moreno, union president.
Achieving Gains with Partnership
To achieve the significant gains for workers, the Solidarity Center engaged with union leadership in a comparative analysis of past arbitration agreements and offered communication support during the bargaining process.
“They helped us draft our fair list of demands, when we reached the collective bargaining stage,” says Cristian Rizo, union general secretary. “The Solidarity Center has greatly supported us in our growth.”
Bolstering skills training and strengthening miners collaboration is part of Solidarity Center’s regional efforts in Brazil, Colombia and Peru, where multinational corporations force miners to endure long days in difficult and often dangerous conditions.
Sharing the benefits of their union in a video, workers describe how they will benefit with the new contract, and urge others to join unions to defend their rights.
“Unity is strength.”
