Why South-east Asia must write its own rules on platform work: Opinion

How governments address protection gaps for platform workers is at the centre of global labour negotiations right now. Member states of the International Labour Organization (ILO) are in Geneva, until Jun 12, for final talks to set standards on how work organised through digital platforms and algorithmic systems should be governed.

If adopted, the proposed Convention and Recommendation on Decent Work in the Platform Economy would be the first international labour law to directly address platform work.

The ILO talks are being held at a crucial moment, when the number of people who earn income through freelance portals and gig work apps is rising rapidly. The World Bank estimates that up to 435 million workers or 12.5 per cent of the global workforce rely on gig work for income, a number which is likely to surpass one billion by 2030.

In South-east Asia, the gig economy employs more than 40 million people. As platform work becomes more deeply embedded in the region’s digital economy, the need to establish baseline protections for workers and foster greater regional cooperation on that aspect is clear.

The question is whether a single global standard, designed to apply across economies as structurally different as Germany, Ghana and the Philippines, is the right instrument to achieve such safeguards.

In the Global North, policymakers are primarily concerned with preventing the expansion of informal arrangements into the formal economy in a way that erodes existing protections, or accelerates the outsourcing of work to Global South economies.

The picture is quite different across the Global South, where millions of workers rely on informal work for access to incomes that the formal economy might not provide.

The ILO estimates that informal employment accounts for about 86.6 per cent of total employment in South Asia and 69.3 per cent in South-east Asia. In Cambodia, about 88 per cent of the workforce is in informal employment, while that figure is roughly 63 per cent in Thailand.

For workers in these economies, platform work is a step up from informal labour with no baseline protections whatsoever. This distinction matters enormously for how regulation should be designed.

Structural differences in markets

The pitfalls of a universalist approach have been reflected in recent disagreements over the extent to which the EU’s Platform Work Directive retains its usefulness in more diverse national contexts.

Adopted in 2024, the EU rules aim to ease the way for more platform workers to be reclassified as employees by placing the burden on employers to prove that their contractual relationship is not an employment relationship.

But a standard oriented around employment reclassification assumes a bifurcated system with meaningful formal employment on one side. In many economies where that binary does not hold, imposing hard classification mandates can produce perverse outcomes – platforms exit certain markets, workers lose income access and coverage gaps widen.

The fact is that labour markets in South-east Asia and other developing economies are fundamentally different from those in Europe and North America.

The policy challenge is to build protections around this reality, rather than to legislate against it. Several South-east Asian governments have already demonstrated what locally grounded, fit-for-purpose regulation can look like.

Singapore’s Platform Workers Act, which took effect in January 2025, offers a useful reference point. The Act introduced a distinct legal category for platform workers, positioned between employee and self-employed.

It also mandated work injury insurance coverage, pension contributions for retirement and housing, and set out a formal framework for platform worker representation through platform work associations.

It did so deliberately without reclassifying platform workers as employees. The approach decoupled social protections from employment status, extending meaningful coverage without disrupting the operating model that makes platform work accessible and flexible for the workers who choose it.

Malaysia has taken a parallel path. The Gig Workers Act 2025, which came into force in March 2026, extends mandatory social security coverage, provides occupational safety and health protection, and establishes a structured dispute resolution process for gig workers across both platform and non-platform sectors.

Notably, the legislation covers 1.6 million workers while preserving flexibility as a defining feature of the engagement.

Malaysia’s Minister of Human Resources Ramanan Ramakrishnan described the Act as a model for a fair and sustainable gig economy in the region, though it is still early days to see how such protections will be implemented.

Both frameworks share a common design logic – protections are designed to balance the twin priorities of worker welfare and economic participation, with in-built flexibility to evolve as the platform economy itself changes.

At the same time, ongoing discussions suggest that this balance is still being worked out in practice, underscoring the need for continued evaluation and adjustment.

Limitations of EU directive

Meanwhile, the EU’s Platform Work Directive, which is the closest precedent to what the ILO convention proposes globally, has not yet been fully implemented. Member states have until December 2026 to transpose it into national law, and the process is already generating significant variation.

The directive leaves the definition of “control and direction” in the determination of an employment relationship up to each member state’s existing labour law, so its practical effect will differ materially across 27 jurisdictions. The framework is being globalised before its own track record is established.

Even advocates of the directive have acknowledged its limitations, citing the wide discretion left to national legislators and the risk that member states will introduce weak enforcement mechanisms.

If implementation within a single economic bloc with shared legal infrastructure and decades of labour law harmonisation is proving this complex, the case for exporting its underlying logic to economies with fundamentally different labour market conditions deserves scrutiny.

For the ILO convention to be a useful reference point for domestic regulation, it must be principles-based, rather than prescriptive. The ILO standard, if adopted, may provide useful reference points for national governments on specific issues such as algorithmic transparency, data rights and cross-border platform accountability – areas where multilateral frameworks can add genuine value.

Care should be taken to avoid turning the ILO convention into a blunt tool that forces the application of employment laws designed for a different era.

For South-east Asia, a more progressive way forward is for the region’s policymakers to engage with the ILO process as one input among many.

Regional dialogue, including learning from the evolving experiences of governments such as Singapore and Malaysia, and consultation with the full range of stakeholders including workers, platforms and civil society, are equally legitimate sources of regulatory design.

Labour market governance in South-east Asia will be more durable if it is built on a ground-up foundation.

The writer is the head of Apac and economics strategy at Access Partnership, a strategic advisory firm focused on frontier technologies and industry transformation

Source: The Business Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.

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