Beyond Employment: Safe Rates and Trade Union Rights In Global Road Transport

As gig work accelerates already entrenched non-standard employment practices, growing numbers of workers fall outside traditional labor protections. Nowhere is this more visible than in road transport, long fragmented by multi-level contractual chains and now further disrupted by digital platforms. At the bottom of these chains, truck drivers and other road transport workers face intense competition and incentive-based pay schemes that encourage dangerous on-road practices, threatening the safety of all road users.

In alliance with politicians, civil society, and occasionally certain employers, trade unions have developed an innovative regulatory strategy known as ‘Safe Rates’. By raising drivers' take-home pay and extending obligations across contractual chains, Safe Rates systems address both road safety and the rights gap created by the (mis)classification of workers as independent contractors. In doing so, they offer a non-traditional but increasingly vital avenue for the exercise of collective voice and fundamental labor rights beyond the conventional employment relationship.

This session explores Safe Rates as both a labor movement strategy and a regulatory model from local, national and international perspectives. We welcome empirical and theoretical contributions, including different approaches to Safe Rates and their impact, union strategies, international solidarity, and implications for broader logistics industries and platform capitalism. We encourage submissions from scholars working within and beyond national contexts to advance a global conversation on supply chain accountability and labor rights in the 21st century.