“Platform work: the ILO has decided. Now it’s the countries’ turn to decide.”

On June 12, 2026, in Geneva, the International Labour Organization adopted the first international convention on decent work in digital platforms. You probably didn’t hear about it, and yet it may end up shaping the lives of millions of people who deliver food, drive an Uber or do online microtasks anywhere in the world, Latin America included.

What the convention says — and what it doesn’t

Convention C193 (ILO, 2026) recognizes freedom of association and collective bargaining for these workers, and extends to them protections once almost exclusive to formal employment: occupational safety, data protection and safeguards against the automated systems that today decide much of their working day. Because it is an ILO convention, its reach is potentially global: any member country can ratify it, not only those with an advanced debate.

But an ILO convention changes nothing on its own. Conventions don’t apply automatically in any member country; they are a standard each government decides — or not — to adopt. Each country must ratify it first, and then reform its own legislation to comply. That can take years, and no country is required to start the process on any fixed timeline. The ILO has conventions that have waited decades for ratification, so the existence of C193 doesn’t yet guarantee any concrete change in any country.

Two extremes, elsewhere in the world

C193 doesn’t arrive on empty ground either. The European Union had already moved with Directive (EU) 2024/2831, in force since December 2024, requiring platforms to be transparent about how their automated systems assign tasks, evaluate performance or disconnect someone from the app. At the opposite extreme sits the United States, with no federal law: a Human Rights Watch survey of drivers in Texas found they earn 16.90 dollars gross per hour, tips included, but only 5.12 dollars net after vehicle expenses.

Latin America is arriving late

In Latin America, there is a wide gap between what is already regulated elsewhere in the world and the local reality. Platform work is no longer marginal: between 4% and 14% of the Latin American labor force takes part in some way, depending on whether you count only those who live off it or also those who use it as secondary income (Cravo, 2025). The World Bank estimates some 12 million people for whom it is their main income and another 21 million who use it as secondary income, out of a regional labor force of about 330 million. The UNDP, in its 2025 Regional Human Development Report, flags this economy as one of the pressures reshaping the labor market, visible above all in Mexico City, Bogotá and Lima. That growth advanced, in most countries in the region, without an international standard yet saying what minimum rules should apply.

Three countries, three speeds

Guatemala, Mexico and Panama capture the distance between the international standard and each country’s reality. Mexico moved first; Panama is halfway; Guatemala doesn’t even have that. C193 won’t close the gap overnight, but it gives all three the same reference point none of them had until now.

Why we’re studying it

At Oikos Data Lab we are researching how platform work shapes labor formality in Guatemala, Mexico and Panama. We chose them because they are different contexts, with different progress on regulation and on the economic accessibility of this kind of work. If the topic interests you, follow us so you don’t miss what comes next.