Why safeguarding the rights of gig workers is a must

In August Rajasthan became the first Indian state to pass a dedicated law to protect the interests of gig workers The PlatformBased Gig Workers Registration and Welfare Act 2023 makes it mandatory for all gig workersmdashmen and women employed by services like food or grocery delivery transport and speedy courier servicesmdashto be registered with the government so that they can enjoy the benefits of labour laws The Act was hailed as groundbreaking because according to many services that employ such labour have for too long gotten away with exploitative policies thanks to legal gray areasNow in a recent report by Fairwork India it has come to the light that even the consumer is waking up to the plight of the gig workersThe research led by the Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy CITAPP at the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore IIITB along with the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford has noted that 80 per cent of consumers in 12 Metro cities including Mumbai have said that are aware that platform workers work long hoursFor the last five years the annual report has rated platforms such as BigBasket BluSmart Swiggy Urban Company Zomato Zepto flipkart Amazon flex Dunzo Uber Ola and Porter based on working conditions based on the International Labour Organisation ILO as well Indian labour laws This year the researchers decided to ask the consumers what they thought In their survey 91 per cent of the consumers agreed that platforms must discuss the shared concerns of the workers which are increasingly gaining limelightJanaki Srinivasan Associate Professor International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore IIITB says that the inclusion of consumers was a conscious choice but the focus still remains on the gig workers ldquoIn 2017 and 2018 the conversation was about generation of jobs or innovation of the platforms or convenience of consumers but very little was said of the working conditions of the those in these jobs It may have been so because a lot of these platforms had just started back then and there was a lot of incentives for workers in the beginningrdquo she explains ldquoIt is only very recently that the push back from both the workers and the consumers has been observedrdquoEspecially on social media consumers are seen being increasingly vocal about the plight of gig workers The common man is seen routinely posting about stories shared by their friends or simply by the exhausted looking young man who just dropped their dinner offThe push back from the workers has largely been about how they are rated and the lack of data for how much work is being allocated the route picked for the delivery and the workers being banned from working if their ratings drop According to a report published in September by the East Asia Forum a think tank that looks at economics politics and public policy in East Asia and the Pacific India has an excess supply of workingage individuals with a median age around 28 years The report quotes the governmentrsquos Periodic Labour Force Survey data for 2021 to 2022 to say that the unemployment level remains stagnant at 88 per cent and has not changed much since 2017ldquoThis is not surprising as many young workers lack technical education and tertiary level certificatesmdashonly 13 per cent of Indians has a technical education and only 07 per cent has a graduate certificate in vocational education The alternative is lowpaid gig work An estimated 77 million people relied on such jobs as of 2020 and this figure is estimated to increase to 235 million by 2030rdquo says the report by Nilanjan BanikBilahari M the head researcher for Fairworkrsquos report says that the recent pledges by the platforms to take the workersrsquo aggregate rating for their the last 150 jobs is what they will be monitoring closely for the next year ldquoThis would mean that the workers do not have to spend long hours waiting for a gig as their ratings would not go down based only on a handful of bad ratings Workers have been known to work without pay in order to get back to their previous rankingrdquo he says Fairworkrsquos report rates the companies based on five principles fair pay fair conditions fair management fair contracts and fair representationThe gig workers are also currently fighting a case in the Supreme Court to be recognised as employees and not just partners or selfemployed The aim is gettingplatform workers to pay welfare on each transaction and reach an understanding of minimum wage for the long hours that the workers are putting inRatings based on the five principlesBig Basket 610BluSmart 510Swiggy 510Urban Company 510Zomato 510Zepto 410Flipkart 310Amazon flex 210Dunzo 110