ILO Adds Feature to Tracker to Include Platform Work Agreements

The International Labour Organization (ILO) has expanded its Digital Labour Platform Policy Tracker with a new component dedicated to collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) related to platform work. This addition provides a structured overview of agreements between trade unions and platform companies across different countries and sectors, including key details about their content, scope, and legal standing.

The tracker, part of the ILO’s Observatory on Artificial Intelligence and the Digital Economy, allows users to filter agreements by country and platform type, and to explore descriptive summaries on a variety of topics. The new feature aims to make collective agreements in the platform economy more visible and easier to analyze, supporting transparency and informed policymaking in a fast-changing labor environment.

According to the ILO, this initiative responds to the growing need for reliable and comparable information about the regulation of digital labor platforms. “The ILO’s Digital Labour Platform Policy Tracker is designed to serve as a practical resource for governments, employers’ and workers’ organizations, policymakers, and researchers,” says the organization. “It provides a comprehensive overview of global policies, legislation, and collective agreements, helping users understand how countries are addressing the challenges and opportunities of digital platform work.”

Platform-based employment has grown rapidly over the past decade, reshaping traditional labor relations and raising questions about worker protections, social benefits, and fair competition. Many of these workers—drivers, couriers, or freelancers in online marketplaces—operate under flexible arrangements that fall outside established labor law frameworks. The ILO’s new tracker component seeks to document how social partners are negotiating new forms of representation and protection in this emerging context.

Currently, the tracker includes collective bargaining agreements that are publicly available in Europe. Each entry provides information on whether the agreement operates at the company, sectoral, or national level, and whether it has been legally recognized or registered. The ILO plans to expand the geographic scope of the tool in the coming months to include other regions, along with judicial decisions and legislative updates related to the platform economy.

This initiative forms part of a broader ILO effort to monitor and assess global policy developments in digital labor markets. The organization has been developing a series of open-access tools to support evidence-based policymaking and promote decent work in a digitalized economy. The tracker complements other ILO digital resources, such as the recently redesigned ILOSTAT country profiles, which provide real-time labor data for all member states.

The expansion of the policy tracker is also aligned with the ILO’s commitment to strengthen social dialogue in the platform economy. By compiling and comparing different approaches to collective bargaining, the tracker helps identify patterns and best practices that can inform future negotiations between platforms, workers, and regulators.

Beyond its immediate research and policy applications, the new component represents an important step in recognizing collective bargaining as a critical mechanism for ensuring fair working conditions in digital labor. As the platform economy continues to evolve, such tools will become increasingly valuable for understanding the dynamics between technology, labor, and regulation.

In the next phase of the project, the ILO will focus on broadening the tracker’s coverage to include judicial rulings related to labor disputes in the platform economy and newly enacted legislation. The database will be continuously updated as new agreements and laws are published, ensuring that it remains a reliable source of information for all stakeholders involved in shaping the future of work.