How States govern platform work: An evaluation of regulatory approaches in Latin America

In this article, I examine recent laws regulating platform work in Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, Colombia and Argentina. Drawing on legal and policy documents and interviews with key informants, I develop a multi-dimensional framework for comparing how these laws distribute rights, obligations and risks, considering eight dimensions: (1) employment status and legal classification; (2) regulatory scope and coverage; (3) access to social protection; (4) platform firms’ obligations and employers’ responsibilities; (5) algorithmic management; (6) data rights; (7) freedom of association and collective bargaining; and (8) enforcement institutions and accountability mechanisms. Most of the reforms examined recognize platform workers through differentiated regimes that preserve platform exceptionalism, fragment social protection and collective rights, and address algorithmic management and workplace data primarily through procedural safeguards. Mexico is moving towards integrating platform work into the architecture of labour protection, whereas Argentina exemplifies what I refer to as “regulatory recoupling” through its relocation under civil-commercial regulation. Given the recent adoption of the ILO Decent Work in the Platform Economy Convention, 2026 (No. 193), the article offers a preliminary assessment of these regulatory trajectories against the new standard