The International Labour Conference 101: A guide for Ministers of Workplace Relations
The 114th International Labour Conference 2026 adopted a new convention; Convention 193 Decent Work in the Platform Economy, 2026.
In the vote for adoption the New Zealand's Minister for Workplace Relations, Brooke van Velden, distinguished herself by instructing the New Zealand Government’s delegates to vote against adoption (which had the effect that van Velden’s name does not appear on the official record of the vote). New Zealand thus aligned itself with only the only other government, that of the United States of America, which opposed the adoption. Another eight governments abstained in the vote. Other abstentions or negative votes were from employer representatives with the exception of a negative vote by the worker representative from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Van Velden is reported as saying that New Zealand opposed adoption because, among other reasons, the New Zealand Government was not given time to “seek assurances the final text would not undermine New Zealand law” and that “the Government should not sign up to an international convention where governments were shut out of the decision making about the final text, and were not privy to the reasoning behind the words arrived at.”
Whether these statements are the result of inadequate briefing by MBIE officials, prevarication or ignorance is open to debate but one thing is clear: they are wrong.
Adoption and Ratification – the difference
First, one would have thought that any Minister representing New Zealand at an International Labour Conference would be aware that the adoption of a convention has no legal effect on New Zealand law. Adoption is the process by which the ILO formally recognises the convention.
A convention will only become binding on a Member State if the government of a state ratifies the convention, that is the individual government decides to become bound by it.
The one exception to this is that member governments of the ILO are bound to respect and promote the principles of those conventions making up the he International Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. Thus, while New Zealand has yet to ratify Convention 87 on Freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining, the ER Act commits New Zealand to promote the observance of the convention.
The ILO website explains ratification as follows:
Ratification is a formal procedure whereby a State accepts the Convention or Protocol as a legally binding instrument. Once it has ratified a Convention or Protocol, a country is subject to the ILO regular supervisory system, which is responsible for ensuring that the instrument is applied.
To be quite clear – the only obligation on a state once a convention is adopted is to submit the convention to the legislature for discussion – there is no obligation to ratify.
ILC Voting
It should perhaps be made clear that at the International labour Conference unlike any other international organisation, a country’s delegation consists of three sets of delegates: government, worker and employer representatives. All representatives have full and independent voting rights- the government 2 votes and the worker and employer representatives 1 each. As adoption of a convention requires a two-thirds majority at least two of these groups would need to vote in favour.
The ILO’s legislative process
Second, unlike the Minister’s preferred model of pushing legislation through without consultation and under urgency, the ILO’s legislative process is open, transparent and provides ample opportunity for input from governments, workers and employers.
The basic process for adopting a convention is set out below. It should be clear from this that governments, workers and employers can be actively involved in the legislative process at all stages and that all will be fully aware of the text of a proposed convention well before it gets anywhere near final adoption. MBIE officials would have had several opportunities over 2-3 years to consider the proposed convention and to brief their Minister. The extent to which they took advantage of these opportunities I have no idea.
Thise ILO’s “double discussion” procedure for the adoption of international labour standards is intended to give Conference participants sufficient time to examine the draft instrument and make comments on it.
The key steps are:
1 the Governing Body agrees to put an issue on the agenda of a future International Labour Conference.
2 the International Labour Office prepares a report that analyses the law and practice of member States with regard to the issue at stake.
3 the report is communicated to member States and to workers’ and employers’ organisations for comments and is then submitted to the International Labour Conference for a first discussion.
4 a second report is then prepared by the Office with a draft instrument, which is also sent for comments and submitted for discussion at the following session of the Conference, where the draft instrument is discussed, amended as necessary and proposed for adoption.
5 A two-thirds majority of votes is required for a standard to be adopted.
A few comments
The first comment is that the claim that New Zealand New Zealand Government was not given time to consider the impact of the convention and that it was shut out of the decision making about the final text, seem, to be frank – bullshit.
The Report of the Standard-Setting Committee on Decent Work in the Platform Economy Convention 193 (this relatively small committee has 3 members from each of the government, worker and employer groups in addition to the Chair and vice-chairs) contains a number of references to the position of the New Zealand Government – a search of the report shows at least 14 references to the New Zealand Government position. The Government can of course also speak in the general discussions of the Conference.
As an aside it might be noted that there was one New Zealand delegate on the Committee, Melissa Ansell-Bridges a worker delegate.
A second comment is that the Convention provides a useful foundation for any future law reform in New Zealand. In essence the Convention seeks to ensure that platform workers receive similar legal protections as other workers.
I might come back to the Convention in a future post but for the meantime for a discussion and analysis of the convention see this paper by Valerio de Stefanio of York University in Canada