NZ joins with the US to vote against gig economy worker rights at global ILO meeting
Thursday, 18 June 2026
It has emerged New Zealand was one of just two countries ‒ alongside the United States ‒ to vote against adopting a new suite of global protections for workers in the gig economy at an International Labour Organisation (ILO) conference held in Geneva last week.
The 114th ILO conference culminated in the first international standard protecting digital gig and platform workers, setting floors for standards on things like pay, safety and health, social security and correct classification (employees versus contractors) ‒ a key issue for determining whether workers receive enhanced protections.
There were eight parties in all that voted against the standard, known as Convention No. 193 on Decent Work in the Platform Economy.
As well as the New Zealand and US governments, others included delegations representing employer groups from Mauritius, Thailand and Congo.
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New Zealand’s business lobby, BusinessNZ ‒ of which rideshare platform Uber is a significant member ‒ joined Britain and India and 33 other parties in abstaining.
Four hundred and six governments and employer and employee delegations voted to affirm the convention ‒ including the governments of Australia, China, France and Germany.
The convention calls on member states to ensure digital platform workers enjoy fundamental rights at work, including freedom of association and collective bargaining, protection from discrimination, child labour and forced labour, and the right to a safe and healthy working environment. It also extends to them rights previously limited to employees ‒ covering areas such as occupational safety and health and employment termination or deactivation.
The new standard applies to all digital labour platforms and extends key protections to all platform workers, regardless of how their employment status is classified under national law.
An ILO convention is not automatically binding on a country until that country's government chooses to formally ratify it.
The secretary of the NZCTU, Melissa Ansell-Bridges, who was a member of the workers’ group and sat on the drafting committee, said the convention was “undoubtedly a turning point in the fight to improve conditions for these workers”.
“It is absolutely shameful, however, that the New Zealand Government was one of only two governments to vote against the convention …[it] leaves this Government isolated from the clear international consensus that platform workers need stronger rights and protections.”
National Secretary of the Public Service Association (PSA) Fleur Fitzsimons said it was “embarrassing that we are the only country in the world aligned to Trump’s America when it comes to the rights of platform workers. The National Party should be ashamed that they let Brooke Van Velden vote against a moderate international convention to protect platform workers.”
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Brooke van Velden told The Post the reason for the New Zealand Government’s vote against the convention was because it was not given time to “seek assurances the final text would not undermine New Zealand law.
“New Zealand voted against the convention on the grounds the Government should not sign up to an international convention where governments were shut out of the decision making about the final text, and were not privy to the reasoning behind the words arrived at,” she said.
She added the Government had taken the issue of platform-based work “seriously, putting in place legal clarifications to our laws to ensure businesses and workers are sure of their rights in the modern economy in the Employment Relations Amendment Act.”
Earlier this year, the coalition Government passed the Act. It created a “gateway test” that would more likely qualify platform-based workers as contractors rather than employees.
The law’s passage came after Uber fought a 2023 Employment Court ruling all the way to the Supreme Court over the issue, but the Supreme Court affirmed the Employment Court and the Court of Appeal’s ruling that Uber drivers were in fact employees.
RNZ reported in October 2024 that a proposal taken by Uber to a meeting with van Velden in May of that year, with “proposed amendments” to the Employment Relations Act, were similar to the new criteria used to define a contractor under the Amendment Bill.
Van Velden denied Uber had had its recommendations “cut and pasted” into the new law, saying the final version was an “amalgamation” of ideas put forward by business groups and unions. Later tweaks to the bill ensured the new regime was not to be applied retrospectively, as Uber had wanted.