How the new ILO Convention 193 benefits digital platform workers within the fashion industry

Millions of workers worldwide are employed by the digital platform economy, that is economic and social activities conducted on online platforms that connect directly with consumers. According to research by the Harvard Kennedy School, this could be between 154 million and 435 million people, depending on how broadly gig work, ride-hailing, delivery and online freelancing are defined. While only a fraction of countries currently track platform labour formally, it is even harder to estimate how many of these workers are employed in the fashion industry.

However, one can extrapolate the scale of fashion’s digital platform workforce by analysing where the broader global fashion industry connects with the platform economy. The total global fashion workforce sits at roughly 60 million to 75 million garment and retail workers. With fashion e-commerce revenues exceeding 760 billion US dollars globally, this has opened up many job opportunities for stylists and photographers, copywriters and graphic designers on the creative and content side, digital marketers and fashion buyers on the business side, and software engineers, data analysts and interface designers on the technical side.

The fashion industry and the gig economy

The fashion e-commerce industry not only relies heavily on platform labour for the “last mile” delivery but in major apparel hubs like India, the boom of rapid 10-to-15-minute delivery apps is fundamentally altering the fashion workforce. Reports from garment-manufacturing hubs note that factory workers are increasingly leaving traditional textile floor jobs to become flexible digital platform drivers due to better hourly flexibility and better pay according to media house Apparel Resources.

Out of the estimated 154 million to 435 million online gig workers globally, creative fields heavily feed into fashion with brands sourcing freelance fashion illustrators, apparel pattern makers, textile designers and e-commerce copywriters. A massive subsection of digital platform workers includes fashion content creators, stylists and social media influencers who generate income directly through platforms like Instagram, TikTok and YouTube via brand deals and affiliate link deals.

Another and unique layer of fashion platform work includes peer-to-peer micro-entrepreneurs. Millions of independent workers generate partial or full-time income by operating as professional resellers on specialised digital fashion platforms like Depop, Poshmark, Vinted and eBay. Driven by a secondhand apparel market expected to scale to 350 billion US dollars, these platform participants function as independent supply-chain workers—handling sourcing, photography, customer service and fulfilment algorithmically via these applications.

Until now, these millions of digital platform economy workers had no international labour standard dedicated specifically to them. This changed in June of this year with The Decent Work in the Platform Economy Convention, 2026 (No.193) by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Scope of Convention 193

It has established a global framework to help ensure that technological innovation and new business models go hand in hand with workers’ rights, fair competition and sustainable economic growth: “It seeks to ensure that all digital platform workers, regardless of their status in employment, can benefit from fundamental rights and appropriate protections, while recognising the opportunities created by digital labour platforms,” explains the ILO in a press release.

Convention 193 applies to all digital labour platforms and digital platform workers, whether they are in an employment relationship or not, including self-employed workers, and regardless if they work in the formal or informal economy. It also covers location-based as well as online platform work. Given that the nature of platform work is often organised across borders and may involve intermediaries, the Convention includes provisions aimed at ensuring the effectiveness of its protections in various countries and extending to intermediaries.

Should certain digital platform workers’ rights already be recognised in certain member states, the Convention does not negatively affect these. It rather “establishes a floor of protections and introduces safeguards in areas that have become increasingly important in the digital economy, including algorithmic management and data protection,” states the ILO.

The Convention also seeks to ensure that the protection afforded to digital platform workers is not less favourable than that granted to other workers with the same status in employment. In other words, digital platform workers who are employees should not be less protected than other categories of employees.

Rights and protections under Convention 193

The Convention addresses a broad range of issues, including fundamental principles and rights at work, occupational safety and health, violence and harassment, the promotion of decent work opportunities, remuneration or payment and social security.

It also covers the impact of the use of automated systems based on algorithms on workers, data protection and privacy, suspension, deactivation and termination, protection of migrants and refugees and access to justice.

Algorithms and artificial intelligence

Convention 193 also contains provisions on the impact of the use of automated systems based on algorithms, including automated decision-making systems, which should be used responsibly. It establishes principles relating to their transparent use and access to review mechanisms when such systems affect workers. It also needs to be ensured that digital labour platforms have appropriate human involvement.

“While the Convention does not explicitly refer to artificial intelligence, its provisions apply to automated systems used to monitor or evaluate work or to generate decisions relating to work, including those that may incorporate AI technologies,” explains the ILO.

Applicability

Convention 193 will not apply immediately in all 187 ILO member states. Like all ILO Conventions, Convention 193 becomes legally binding only for those member states that ratify it. Once that is done by the competent authority (normally the member state’s parliament or legislative assembly together with the executive branch), the convention must be implemented through national laws, regulations, policies, collective agreements or other measures, in accordance with each country's legal system and national practice.

While this may require some time and effort on the part of each member state, the involvement of millions of workers (up to 5.7 percent of a country’s workforce according to an ILO research brief of February 2026) should make it a pertinent issue. In addition, there are unique employment challenges that need to be tackled sooner rather than later, for example the lax classification of workers as independent contractors or self-employed sole proprietors, thus systematically bypassing standard labour rights, minimum wages and collective bargaining frameworks.