Labor conditions in the PH platform economy

TENS of millions of digital platform workers live all over the world, doing work that is outsourced via platforms or apps. In many countries like the Philippines, platform firm labor has attracted many informal workers including those formerly employed workers who have lost jobs or were displaced during the pandemic. Fairwork Philippines (Fairwork PH) recently launched a report from their first independent investigation of the working conditions in the Philippine platform economy. Prof. Cheryll Soriano, principal investigator of Fairwork Philippines and professor at De La Salle University's Department of Communication, said their research estimates close to half a million platform workers. There could be more. For sure, many are not registered and accounted for in official statistics.

Nine of the country's largest digital labor platforms — Angkas, Borzo (formerly MrSpeedy), Foodpanda, Grab Car, Grab Food/Express, Joyride, Lalamove, TokTok and Transportify — were assessed against five principles of fairness: fair pay, fair conditions, fair contracts, fair management and fair representation, giving each a fairness score out of 10. Data collection was done through desk research, worker interviews and manager interviews. Final scores were collectively decided by the Fairwork team based on all three forms of evidence. This Fairwork PH 2022 Report presented the first set of Fairwork ratings for the Philippines and established a baseline for the country's platform economy that would be updated on a yearly basis.