When Singaporean creator Haresh Tilani left his corporate job to build Ministry of Funny, a YouTube comedy channel he co-founded with Terence Chia, he knew it was a gamble.
“We went viral for the first time in 2014,” he recalled. “We told ourselves: if we don’t try it now, we’ll never know.”
A decade later, Ministry of Funny has more than 128,000 subscribers, but longevity in the creator economy rarely guarantees security. In 2019, when Tilani and Chia produced a TV show inspired by their online content, the commissioning company liquidated before paying the remaining 40% of their fee.
“If there was a union back then, someone to advise, to represent us, even if it didn’t solve things financially, it would have been something,” Tilani said.
His story points to something much bigger. The creator economy may be on track to hit $480 billion globally by 2027 (Goldman Sachs) and $41.6 billion in Asia-Pacific (Market.US), but the people driving that growth remain deeply vulnerable. Nearly two-thirds of creators rely on part-time work, and almost half make under $15,000 a year.
A Tipalti/Wakefield study of 750 creators in the US and UK paints a clear picture: 87% said they’d been paid late, paid incorrectly, or not paid at all. There’s no comparable data yet for Asia-Pacific, largely because the ecosystem here is informal and fragmented, but creators across the region tell similar stories. Payment delays, unreliable contracts, and a lack of basic protections have become a pattern and part of the job description.
“If you’re doing this full-time, that delay can mean you miss rent or bills. Having a union would make content creation recognised as real work—one that deserves timely payment and protection,” said Jessa Velasquez, who juggles copywriting full-time and freelance content creation on platforms like Instagram, where she has over 20,000 followers. She added that she often encounters 30- to 60-day payment terms in the Philippines, and sometimes even longer.
Paradoxically, this is an ecosystem built on visibility and yet the financial insecurity is so invisible.
The case for unionisation
The call for protection is no longer theoretical. In October 2025, the Creators Association of Southeast Asia (CASA) launched in Jakarta, backed by influencer Vina Muliana, communications firm Vero, talent agency Mantappu Corp, and the Indonesian Beauty Vlogger Community. Indonesia houses some 12 million creators who produce up to a million items of content every month, CASA aims to establish fair collaboration standards in that market.
CASA's launch in October in Jakarta.
CASA’s founders have publicly described the group as a “pre-union” network—an initial step toward codifying fair payment, standard contracts, and shared industry guidelines across Southeast Asia.
For Tilani, that kind of structure would have been transformative. “For over a decade, we’ve operated in this fragile middle ground between creative freedom and financial survival,” he said. “A union could lobby for protections and serve as a collective voice.”
Velasquez echoed him: “I often encounter 30- to 60-day payment terms, sometimes longer. Even just standardising payment terms or revision limits would help.”
Agencies see potential advantages too. “Defining consistent pay rates would benefit both creators and marketers,” said James Baldwin, head of influence, APAC at Ogilvy. “Brands could ensure fair value and protect against overpayment.”
Elsewhere, unions and guilds are already reshaping creative industries. In the U.S., SAG-AFTRA extended its jurisdiction to cover influencer and digital talent, granting access to collective bargaining and healthcare. The Creators Guild of America (CGA) introduced a standardised contract rider to protect creator IP and payment terms—a few examples that offer templates for what Asia could adapt.
Why unionisation remains elusive
Independence, the very trait that defines the sector, makes it difficult to collectivise.
“Forming a union requires financial buy-in from creators,” Baldwin said. “But many live paycheck to paycheck. If you tell them contributions will be 10%, they hesitate. It’s understandable.”
Definitional ambiguity also clouds the effort. “Anyone can be a content creator,” said Nirote ‘May’ Chaweewannakorn, Thailand country director at Gushcloud. “Who qualifies for union membership? Anyone with a viral TikTok? The industry is too big for the private sector to handle—it must involve the government.”
Regional complexity compounds the challenge. Often bureaucracy slows things in Asia, but in this sector, it's fragmentation by design.
Labour laws and tax regimes differ widely in APAC. Thailand treats creators and freelancers as typically independent contractors rather than employees under labour law. In the Philippines, it's pretty much the same story, except messier. Many freelancers, including content creators, fall outside the Labour Code and are covered instead by civil contracts. In Indonesia, while influencer or endorsement income is taxable under the general income tax law, there is no specific creator-category tax regime, and interpretation remains unclear. For a regional body to function effectively across multiple markets, alignment and common frameworks would be the baseline—a process that took decades for the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union or journalist federations to establish.
“In Southeast Asia, contracts still function like a ‘cowboy town’,” Chaweewannakorn said. “While 70–80% of US creators are signed to agencies that handle contracts, in Asia, many prefer doing everything themselves. That’s also why contract enforcement here is weaker.”
In the absence of regulation, agencies have stepped into quasi-union roles. Recently, Ogilvy held a two-day Creator Camp in Singapore (picture below) and Gushcloud holds financial literacy programmes to educate creators on how to budget, invoice, and negotiate.
“No single agency can police the whole ecosystem,” Baldwin noted. “But a union could partner with agencies to set and monitor fair-trade standards.”
Ogilvy's 2025 Creator Camp in the Philippines.
In mature markets, coordinated action has proven decisive. SAG-AFTRA’s 2023 strike over AI and residual payments showed how organised creative labour can reset industry standards. For creators in Asia, fragmented by platform, language, and law, building that kind of solidarity remains the biggest hurdle.
The brand perspective
Brands and agencies may have as much to gain from structure as the creators themselves.
In theory, a union or formal collective could simplify what has become one of the most inefficient relationships in modern marketing. Payment terms are often stretched 60 to 90 days, campaign deliverables shift midstream, and contracts, if they exist at all, can be riddled with loopholes. A unified framework could bring transparency to fees, deliverables and usage rights, creating a baseline both sides can trust.
“It’s still a ‘cowboy’ landscape,” Baldwin said bluntly. “Some managers underpay; others overspend. Without benchmarks, both sides lose. Defining consistent pay rates would improve fairness for creators and efficiency for brands.”
That lack of consistency also leaves agencies to act as de facto referees. “At Ogilvy, we safeguard creators who may not yet understand their value,” Baldwin said. “We even increase fees when warranted. We also encourage brands to diversify—not just hire the biggest names.”
He added, “Forming a union requires financial buy-in from creators. But many live paycheck to paycheck. If you tell them contributions will be 10%, they hesitate. It’s understandable. The structure is possible in Asia, but it needs weight—people, participation, maybe brand or agency backing.”
In the meantime, agencies are filling the gap that a union might one day occupy. Ogilvy’s Creator Camp in Singapore brought creators and marketers together for workshops on pointy issues like contracts, pricing, and fair collaboration.
“Most creators are Gen Z,” Baldwin explained. “They’re entering this gig economy with no support—no financial advice, no healthcare, no legal counsel. We want to give them tools to think like businesses, not just as content producers.”
And education is also top of mind at Gushcloud, where Nirote ‘May’ Chaweewannakorn, Thailand country director, said the agency has started developing tools for creators to manage taxes and income over the long term. “If a creator makes 200,000 baht (US$6,115) a year, they rarely set aside half of that into a growth fund. We want to change that thinking,” he said. “But these efforts are individual. A union, with government backing, could institutionalise it.”
He also underscored the importance of contract literacy. “Not all creators use contracts, especially when timelines are fast. But every collaboration should have one,” he said. “We provide templates with key clauses—number of revisions, ownership rights, payment schedules. It protects both sides.”
“Beyond protection, we must ensure creators can access banking and insurance products,” Chaweewannakorn said. “Without transparent income proof, they can’t get loans or mortgages.”
Still, both Baldwin and Chaweewannakorn see a future where agencies, platforms, and creators share the same table. Baldwin envisions a hybrid model that combines agency expertise, platform accountability, and some level of state recognition. “It can start grassroots,” he said, “but structure comes from institutional trust. Creators, agencies, and brands must co-own it.”
For brands, that kind of structure could solve could rebuild trust in an industry where creative labour has been systemically undervalued. As marketing budgets continue shifting toward individual creators, a formalised framework feels less like a radical idea and more like the next logical step in the creator economy’s evolution.
