[OPINION] Vulnerable in oil crisis: Why platform workers need protection

Bong (not his real name) used to work as an OFW in the Middle East. When his contract wasn’t renewed due to health reasons, he turned to platform-based ride-hailing — one of the Philippines’ fastest-growing sources of “flexible” employment. Today, he works 15 to 18 hours a day just to break even.

It wasn’t always this way. Before the recent surge in fuel prices, Bong could clear around P1,000 after expenses in 8 to 10 hours. But like the millions of platform workers across the country – from car ride-hail to motorcycle taxi and to food and courier delivery — Bong is classified by the platform as an “independent contractor.”

It means he absorbs every cost on behalf of the platform: fuel, mobile data, vehicle maintenance, and amortization or boundary fees paid to the operator. On top of these, he services a daily loan deduction of over P200 drawn directly from his app wallet — a loan he took from the very platform he works for. 

The oil price shock triggered by the US-Israel-Iran conflict has made this situation impossible to ignore, with local oil prices shooting up to double since the war broke out. As of March 24, 2026, diesel prices have risen to P134.30 per liter, while gasoline price is projected to exceed P100 per liter, leaving millions of Filipino workers, especially those who depend on their vehicles as a source of livelihood, to absorb the costs on their own.

The platform model: Flexibility as a cover for risk transfer

The Philippines is home to a growing ecosystem of platform-based transport and delivery services. Labor platforms such as Grab, Foodpanda, Maxim, and Lalamove — as well as local players like Angkas, TokTok, and Joyride — have expanded rapidly. 

Around 1.7 million of the 9.9 million gig workers (22% of the Philippine population) are engaged by online platforms or mobile applications, based on the May and June 2021 Labor Force Survey. Meanwhile, Fairwork Philippines 2025 research estimates that 856,500 workers are engaged in 10 of the largest location-based platforms, and many (along with inter-generational households) depend on it as their primary livelihood. 

The “independent contractor” label these platforms rely on is, in practice, a mechanism for pushing business risk down to already-marginalized workers. This sounds empowering — free, flexible, entrepreneurial — but the operational reality tells a different story. 

Platforms simultaneously cut a commission from every transaction (some at 10%, but others cut as high as 24%), set the pricing of gigs and routes to take, dictate conduct and uniform policies, control the scheduling of gigs and how this should be carried out, and retain full authority over suspensions and deactivations. They also decide on what worker data to gather and use — data that may be used to offer the very financial products, like in-app loans, that workers then become trapped in.

The estimated cost breakdown below makes the squeeze concrete:

* Typical work-related costs of a motorcycle taxi rider
**Based on March 2026 consultations with worker groups

Rising fuel costs also ripple into inflation, leading to increasing prices of consumer goods such as food and other basic services that also impact workers.

Resilience isn’t just about typhoons or extreme heat

Our ongoing research, “Resilient Platform Work Philippines,” has largely focused on extreme weather — and for good reason. The Philippines is among the world’s most climate-vulnerable countries, and platform workers face direct exposure: riding through severe floods, enduring heat stress, absorbing income losses during supertyphoons, and taking on repair loans after weather damage. These are recurring realities workers have and already continually experience. They can only worsen amid predictions of worsening climate conditions.

But the oil price surge asks us to expand our frame. Resilience is not only a climate question — it is a geopolitical and a structural one. The same workers who absorb the costs of a supertyphoon now absorb the costs of a war they have no part in. Whether we are talking of climate or man-made conflict, the mechanisms of platform management allows platforms to externalize risk, while workers internalize it.

One-off government assistance (or ayuda), if it even reaches platform workers, provides timely temporary relief but cannot substitute for structural protection. What the current crisis exposes is a gap in the architecture of our social protection programs and how we continually accept systems where we create jobs that have no accompanying safety nets. Informality is longstanding in the Philippines, but the lack of mandatory social protection for platform workers powering multimillion‑peso platforms demands critical scrutiny. 

Power of collective organizing

Joining the jeepney drivers and tricycle operators most visibly hit by the oil crisis, platform workers need to be recognized as part of the same struggle — even if their organizing history is shorter and their category as labor is sometimes misunderstood.

In our interviews with leaders of RIDERS, they described a persistent challenge: some platform workers themselves have internalized the “independent contractor” identity, making them reluctant to see themselves as rights-bearing workers. This is not accidental. The framing serves platforms well. But it is also now being actively contested. Over the past five years, we have seen the emergence of unions like RIDERS and organizations like Kapatiran ng Dalawang Gulong (Kagulong), carving out a collective voice in conditions designed to atomize them.

Unlike the jeepney sector, which carries decades of organized labor history in the Philippines, platform worker organizing is newer. But it is real, it is growing, and it deserves stronger solidarity from the broader labor movement. The decision of platform workers to join the wider public transport strike manifests solidarity among the broader labor movement.

These workers’ associations have become anchors of mutual aid that extend collective power —organizing pooled funds and relief for members sidelined by fuel price surges. These show how platform workers turn everyday struggles over fuel, income, and recognition to the longer histories of labor cooperation and mutual aid within Philippine labor culture.  In doing so, they self‑solve problems that should fall within the responsibility of the state and the platforms themselves: providing welfare support, ensuring fair compensation, and mediating risk. 

What needs to change

Three things follow from everything above.

First, the platform business model must be subjected to greater regulatory scrutiny and transparency. The government and market forces continually promote gig work as a viable entrepreneurial and employment opportunity amid the absence of labour regulations. The independent contractor classification cannot continue to shield platforms and the state from social protection obligations while platforms maintain effective control over workers’ conditions. Resolving the issue of employment status, with all the rights attached to it that are at stake, remains urgent.

Recently, a new platform, Green GSM, has entered the market, offering a suite of electric vehicles and with drivers classified as employees rather than gig workers. The platform provides twice a month salaries tied to a ride quota system and enrollment in the social security system, with no vehicle rental fees. While emerging platform labor management models need continued scrutiny, the entry of electric vehicles (EVs) presents a potentially good alternative that will shield workers from oil price shocks while promoting sustainability. 

Second, platform workers must be included in any policy response to the oil price crisis — not as an afterthought, but as a recognized sector. Fuel subsidies, social protection coverage, and emergency support mechanisms that reach jeepney and tricycle drivers must also reach the platform driver or rider. Beyond this crisis, the government should seriously consider opening more pathways for social security and social protection, regardless of the platform workers’ current or eventual employment status.  

Third, workers themselves — and the unions organizing them — need broader public solidarity. The conditions platform workers face are an important window into what happens when economic growth is built on the systematic offloading of risk onto people who can least afford to bear it.

Bong is not a free entrepreneur navigating flexible opportunity. He is a worker — absorbing work-related costs, carrying debt, and working double the hours — keeping a digital economy moving while the platform that profits from his labor bears little of the exposure.

That is the conversation we need to have. – Rappler.com

Cheryll Soriano, Jan Michael Alexandre Bernadas, Jayvy Gamboa, and China Villanueva are co-investigators of Resilient Platform Work Philippines, a project that examines the intersections of platform work, climate change, and technological development. It is a collaboration between De La Salle University’s Social Development Research Center and Ateneo de Manila’s Manila Observatory, hosted by LIRNEasia and funded by IDRC-Canada through the FutureWORKS Asia research network. 

Geoffrey Labudahon is national coordinator of the National Union of Food Delivery Riders (RIDERS) and is a member of the project’s advisory board.