“They Call Us Partners, but the App Controls Everything”

 Interview

Author: Nandita Shivakumar and Jason Nemerovski

Date: September 1, 2026

In June 2026, the International Labour Organization adopted Convention No. 193 on Decent Work in the Platform Economy, the first international labour standard dedicated specifically to platform work. Its adoption marks an important victory in a sector where companies have exercised significant control over workers while denying them the status and protections of workers, instead classifying them as “partners” or “independent contractors”. 

Lily Pujiati, founder and chairperson of Serikat Pekerja Angkutan Indonesia (SPAI), an Indonesian transport workers’ union, has spent more than a decade fighting the exploitative practices of platform companies. She participated in the negotiations at the International Labour Conference that led to the adoption of Convention No. 193, advocating for the specific needs and rights of women delivery riders.

In this conversation with Nandita Shivakumar and Jason Nemerovski, Lily speaks about building SPAI, organising workers in a rapidly expanding and unevenly regulated sector, and what Convention No. 193 could mean for platform workers, particularly women, in Indonesia and beyond.

Illustration : The Big Fat Bao

Question 1. How did you come to platform work, and what was your experience once you began this work?

Almost 20 years ago, I was trafficked to an East Asian country. After I escaped and returned to Indonesia, rebuilding my life was extremely difficult. I struggled to find stable employment, and platform-based delivery work was one of the few opportunities available to me.

The companies promoted platform work as a flexible and independent way to earn a living. I still remember a company representative telling us that we could choose our own hours, be our own bosses and earn on our own terms. After having been trafficked and forced to work under terrible conditions, that promise of freedom and control over my own working life was incredibly powerful.

But the reality I experienced was very different.

Earnings were low and unpredictable, and I often had to work up to 14 hours a day simply to earn the minimum wage. I also had to bear all the costs of doing the job myself, including the costs of the motorcycle, fuel, parking, mobile data, repairs, and equipment, while the platform deducted around 20% from every fare.

After I started doing this work, I also realised that the platform companies did not consider us as workers. They classified us as “partners”, even though they exercised significant control over how we worked. Because we were not recognised as workers, we were excluded from many of the rights and protections available to other workers, including social security, paid leave, and representation through workplace committees.

As one of few women riders at that time, I also experienced gendered harassment while doing my job. Male customers sometimes asked me to bring orders inside private homes, hotel rooms, or other isolated places, where they would make me feel unsafe. These encounters were deeply unsettling, yet there was no effective system through which I could report harassment or seek support from the platform.

Question 2. What led you to organise platform workers in Indonesia?

After escaping trafficking and returning to Indonesia, I had helped establish a small organisation supporting migrant workers and educating women about the risks of trafficking. That experience taught me something important: when people understand their rights and organise together, only then will they be able to protect themselves and challenge injustice.

I began to see that platform workers, especially women delivery riders, needed a collective organisation through which we could defend our rights. And because the problems we were facing were fundamentally labour issues, about wages, working conditions, safety, and our recognition as workers, I believed that organisation had to be a trade union. That is why I helped establish SPAI.

Question 3. Platform companies describe riders as “partners” or “independent contractors”. You have said that, in your experience, the relationship looks much more like one between an employer and a worker. Why?

Under Indonesian labour law, an employment relationship, where there is an employer and a worker, is generally understood through three core elements: there is work, there is payment for that work, and there is direction or control over how the work is carried out.

A genuine partnership, on the other hand, should mean that both sides have some degree of independence and bargaining power. I should have some ability to negotiate what I am paid, decide which work I take and how I do it, and make my own business decisions. One side should not simply be able to set all the rules and then penalise the other for not following them.

But when I look at how platform work actually operates, I see many more characteristics of an employer-worker relationship than of a genuine partnership.

First, there is clearly work. Without riders accepting orders, collecting goods, and delivering them to customers, the platform’s core business simply cannot function.

Second, there is payment for that work, but we have almost no ability to determine what that payment should be. The platform sets the fares, commissions, and incentives, and can change them without negotiating with us.

Third, and most importantly, there is direction and control. That control does not usually come from a human manager standing in front of us and giving instructions. Instead, it is exercised through the digital application that connects riders with customers. The app allocates orders, determines fares, and commissions, sets targets and incentives, tracks our location and performance, records which orders we accept or reject, uses customer ratings to assess us, and can ultimately suspend or deactivate our accounts.

Much of this control also operates through what I, and many other riders, describe as a “black box”.

The platform collects an enormous amount of data about us: where we are, how quickly we work, which orders we accept or reject, and how customers rate us. But we have very little visibility into how that information is interpreted or used to make decisions about us.

I may suddenly receive fewer orders, lose an incentive, or have my account suspended without understanding what triggered that decision or how I can effectively challenge it.

That is why I believe the reality of this relationship is much closer to an employer-worker relationship, characterised by a significant power imbalance, than to a genuine partnership. Calling it a “partnership” allows companies to retain significant control over how we work while avoiding many of the responsibilities that normally come with being an employer.

This has happened because platform work has evolved more quickly than the legal and regulatory frameworks governing it, and because much of the labour management is done through an app rather than a traditional human supervisor, companies have been able to take advantage of legal loopholes. For riders, the result is that we have carried much of the cost and risk of the work without having the bargaining power or protections of employees.

Question 4. Drawing on your own experience and the cases your union has handled, what are some of the specific risks and challenges that women delivery riders face in platform work?

The gender-specific challenges begin even before a woman starts this work. Because we are classified as “independent contractors”, companies generally do not provide the basic tools needed to do the job. 

A delivery rider usually needs a motorcycle, a smartphone, mobile data, safety equipment, and money for fuel. However, workers have to finance these costs themselves. 

Women often have less access to savings, formal credit, and loans. As a result, some are excluded from platform work altogether, while others enter the job already in debt, sometimes borrowing from informal moneylenders at high interest rates. This is one reason we see far fewer women than men working as delivery riders.

The same gendered disadvantages continue in the day-to-day conditions of the work. 

Let me draw a very simple comparison between factory workers, home-based workers, and delivery riders to explain this.

Factory workers generally work in facilities where toilets, drinking water, and rest areas are available. Home-based workers usually work close to drinking water, toilets, and family or community support. Women delivery riders often have access to none of these facilities because their workplace is the road.

A woman may spend the entire day moving across the city without a safe place to rest, drink water, or use a toilet. In regions outside major commercial areas, finding a safe toilet may mean travelling several kilometres or even returning home. That costs her fuel, takes time away from work, and may force her to reject orders, which can directly reduce her earnings. The lack of toilets is especially difficult during menstruation, and many riders also end up delaying urination for long periods, increasing the risk of urinary health problems.

Childcare is another major challenge in this work. Without workplace childcare, reliable family support, or adequate public services, women may have to take their children with them on the motorcycle or leave them in arrangements they do not consider safe. A woman may also feel unable to take her child to a remote or dangerous delivery location. But if she rejects the order, she may worry that the platform’s algorithm will penalise her by reducing her access to future orders. As I mentioned earlier, this is part of the problem of the algorithmic “black box”: workers often do not know how a refusal will be interpreted or what consequences it may trigger.

Women riders also often lack the basic mechanisms for reporting sexual harassment that may exist in a conventional workplace. There is usually no workplace committee, designated officer, or trusted person a woman can approach in person to explain what happened and expect to be heard with empathy. This is because we are not recognised as workers.  After years of worker organising and protest, some grievance mechanisms have been introduced, but these are often still automated systems, with no assurance that a person will review the complaint or understand the seriousness of what has happened.

For me, one of the defining features of platform delivery work is that many of the costs and responsibilities that would ordinarily be borne by an employer are shifted onto workers, their families, and the state.

In many countries in the Global South, where public transport, sanitation, childcare, and social-protection systems are already inadequate, that makes this work especially difficult for women.

Question 5. You have described the app as a kind of manager. What does that do to workers?

Having an algorithm effectively act as your manager can have a deep psychological impact on workers, as it creates for the worker a feeling of constant surveillance, uncertainty, and the perception that there is no clear endpoint to the work pressure.

A human supervisor is not physically watching you every second, but the app can continuously track your location, acceptance rates, ratings, and performance, as long as your phone is on. Due to this, platform workers can feel that they are always being monitored, even when they do not understand what the system expects from them.

Question 6. How does SPAI respond to the challenges you have described? 

Many workers come to SPAI experiencing severe stress, anxiety, frustration, and hypervigilance. Often, this is after the platform has already wronged them in some way, for example, by failing to pay them for completed work, reducing their access to orders, or deactivating their account without a clear explanation.

The first thing we do is simply give them a space to speak. That is important because there is often nobody at the company they can sit down with to explain what happened and ask for an explanation in return.

We listen, help them understand that they are not alone, and try to take away that feeling that an invisible and all-powerful system is controlling their livelihood.

Then we help them act. We support workers with filing complaints, challenging unfair decisions, and helping them learn from other riders who have successfully resolved similar cases. Through meetings and community sessions, they begin to see there is a union behind them and other workers standing with them.

We have seen many workers first come to SPAI because of one personal grievance. But after participating in meetings, educational programmes, and collective actions, they often begin helping others facing the same problems. In that way, an individual grievance can become the beginning of a worker’s journey from feeling powerless and isolated to becoming a union leader fighting for the rights of others.

Question 7. How do you build women’s leadership in a union where most members are men and the sector itself is heavily male-dominated?

Women’s leadership in a union does not happen automatically just because one of its senior leaders is a woman. It has to be deliberately cultivated.

 In SPAI, women make up around 40% of our membership, but we reserve approximately 60% of leadership positions – from the provincial to the national level – for women.

This is particularly important because the transport sector is still extremely male-dominated. Many of the problems women workers face are also part of the reason so few women enter and remain in the sector in the first place. In that context, if women are not represented in the union’s leadership, there is a real risk that these issues will not be taken up strongly enough by the union. And if the union does not raise them, there is even less pressure on companies or the state to address them.

Through our own experience, we have also realised that simply having women as members is not enough. It does not automatically mean that the issues affecting women will become central to committee discussions, union demands, or campaigns. Many women may initially lack the confidence to speak in union meetings, or face social pressures or restrictions on their mobility that make it harder for them to participate fully.

But when women themselves become leaders, that begins to change. Issues such as sexual harassment and safety, access to toilets and childcare are much more likely to be recognised and fought for as labour issues. It also forces the union itself to organise differently – to think carefully about when and where meetings are held, how women can travel to and from them safely, and how care responsibilities and other constraints on women’s time and mobility shape their ability to participate.

And I think creating this internal culture within unions is just as important as the change we are fighting for outside them. 

If we are not responsive to the realities and needs of women workers within our own unions, we cannot expect employers, platforms, or the state to be responsive to them either.

Question 8. Why is the new ILO Convention on decent work in the platform economy so important? 

The Convention is important because it establishes a global labour standard for a sector that has developed much faster than the laws intended to regulate it. Until now, platform companies have been able to enter different countries, describe themselves as technology companies, and argue that existing labour protections do not apply to the people performing the work. The Convention gives governments, unions, and workers a common framework against which these business models can be assessed.

One of its most important contributions is that it challenges the idea that a company can determine a worker’s legal status simply by calling her a “partner”, “contractor”, or “self-employed person”. The Convention does not automatically declare every platform worker to be an employee, as many trade unions had demanded. But it does say that employment status should be determined by the reality of the working relationship, including how the work is organised, controlled, and paid.

That is important for all platform workers, but it is particularly significant for women workers.

If workers are recognised as workers, it becomes much harder to exclude them from the kinds of protections and workplace structures that exist in more conventional employment, including grievance mechanisms, protection from sexual harassment, social protection, and, where applicable, support such as childcare.

The Convention also addresses algorithmic management. It says workers should receive information about the automated systems that affect their pay, access to orders, and continued access to work. This directly challenges the situation in which a worker loses her livelihood and is left communicating only with a chatbot. For women, this can be particularly important because they may reject orders for gender-specific reasons: an unsafe destination, harassment, childcare responsibilities, needing to find a toilet. And they should not be penalised by an algorithm they cannot question.

Another very important part of the Convention is its recognition of violence and harassment in platform work. The Convention requires governments to ensure that platform workers are protected against violence and harassment and have access to effective mechanisms for resolving disputes and seeking remedies.

The Convention also reinforces fundamental rights at work, including freedom of association and collective bargaining, as well as access to social protection and effective dispute-resolution mechanisms. These protections are particularly important as they are enabling rights, and are much needed in a sector where individual workers have very little bargaining power against large platform companies.

Question 9. What difference could it make for women delivery riders in Indonesia ?

The Convention will not immediately transform conditions for Indonesian women riders. Indonesia must ratify it, translate its principles into national law, and enforce those protections against platform companies. This will take time but SPAI and other unions will be pressing the government to ratify it and ensuring that workers participate in deciding how it is implemented.

We demanded stronger protections for workers during the negotiations, and the final Convention does not contain everything workers and unions sought. It does not automatically resolve the question of employment status, and many of its protections will depend on national implementation. Even so, it is a major achievement. Platform companies can no longer claim that there is no international labour standard for this form of work. We now have a common foundation from which workers in Indonesia and across the world can demand recognition, protection, and accountability.

Question 10. What kind of future do you hope younger platform workers will inherit, and what must change to make that possible?

I hope younger platform workers inherit a future in which technology is not used to take away rights that workers fought generations to secure. Today, terms such as “partner” are often used by companies to create an illusion of freedom while denying workers basic protections.

I know many people have said this before, but it remains true: to build a different future, we have to move away from an economic system that values profit above human life, communities, and the environment.

One very practical way to do that is by restoring meaningful tripartite social dialogue. There is a reason workers, employers, and governments are all supposed to have a seat at the table. Decisions about how work is organised do not affect only company profits; they shape workers’ lives, families, communities, and the environment. We cannot build a fairer future if companies are making these decisions alone.

And sometimes companies think that when we fight for these changes, we are fighting only for workers. We are not. We are also fighting for the children of the people who own and run these companies, because they too will inherit the world we are creating today. 

They too deserve to inherit a society and a planet that is kinder, more caring, and more humane. 

I hope our children inherit strong unions, rights that are already recognised, decent work, and a society in which they can earn a living, return home safely, and care for the people they love. 

More than anything, I hope they are able to live, not merely survive – to work with their heads held high, knowing that their labour, their lives, and their humanity are respected.