As digitalisation is increasingly deployed in professional environments, workers across the globe face difficult conditions, shifting norms and certain skills expectations. Particularly in the Global South and countries such as South Africa, where high unemployment and low levels of meaningful connectivity limit opportunities for workers to productively utilise digital tools for business purposes, livelihoods are threatened by technological disruption, digital displacement, and AI-driven change. It is no surprise then that our workforce and its representatives are calling for a worker-led response to technology-facilitated labour crises at the L20/T20 Workshop, 27 September 2025.
Collaborating on digital labour challenges
Partnered with the Think 20 (T20), Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Institute for Global Dialogue and Research ICT Africa, the Labour 20 (L20) facilitated discussions on labour practices in the digital world, AI deployment, and emerging tech policy for the platform economy. Responding to shared challenges, the L20 and T20 urged for strengthened collaborations on intersecting digital transformation and labour rights interests.
Core objectives of the discussion included:
- Advancing action on the Brazilian and South African T20 Task Force calls for safeguarding digital and labour rights;
- Developing joint, action-oriented proposals on AI disruptions, precarious online work, and the future of labour; and
- Centring African perspectives in global digital policy discussions.
Providing a Global South perspective, with a particular focus on South Asia and Latin America, respectively, Caroline Fredrickson from the International Labour Organisation, Antara Madavane from Aapti Institute, and Sofia Scasserra from the World Labour Institute at Universidad Nacional de Febrero presented findings on shifting labour practices. Thereafter, the conversation addresses digital labour rights in Africa. RIA’s own Tapiwa Chinembire presented findings from our After Access platform work, followed by a presentation from Professor Paola Tubaro and Dr Adio Dinika, who shared collaborative research on East African platform workers’ experience.
Centring workers’ rights in digitalisation discussions
The resultant outcome statement from the workshop states: “The gathering’s deliberations underscored the urgency of placing workers’ rights and interests at the centre of the global conversation on AI and digitalisation, particularly within the G20 process, where labour perspectives remain largely unrepresented. It noted that as the South African G20 Task Force on AI, Data Governance and Innovation for Sustainable Development states: ‘Digital inequality and data injustice, which are more pronounced in the Global South, are at the heart of the currently highly uneven development of AI’.”
Following a detailed outline of consensus decisions, the statement concludes: “Inclusive digital transformation is only possible if workers’ voices are placed at the heart of AI and digital economy governance. The future of the global economy, and its impact at national and regional levels, cannot be left to corporate power and technological determinism; it must be shaped by democratic oversight, social and economic justice, and global solidarity.”
Five outcomes from the L20/T20 Workshop
The outcome statement represents the collective consensus of unions, researchers, and policy institutions present. It covers 5 points of contention in the push to uphold workers’ rights during digitalisation fluctuations, and provides recommendation for unions and worker organisations, civil society, digital policymakers, and the G20 Digital Economy Working Group (DEWG).
The outcomes statement addresses five issues:
- Big Tech Ownership and Concentration of Power
- Collective Bargaining and Worker Agency
- Research Agenda for Inclusive Digital Transformation
- Building Strong Global Alliances
- Centrality of Workers in Digital Governance
Read the full statement here.
