Hello, friends!
Whether it’s a 45°C hot summer day
or there’s water-logging outside due to heavy rains,
whether there’s a storm
or there is too much pollution,
whether it’s day or night,
today, in this era of convenience,
we don’t have to worry ourselves.
Because we can remain in the comfort of our home,
to order whatever we want,
merely through a smartphone app.
But have you ever thought about those strangers
who make this possible?
Have you ever thought about things from their perspective?
These people are called Gig Workers.
According to a survey by the National Council for Applied Economic Research,
on average, a gig worker
works for 69.3 hours in a week in our country.
It’s almost as if you
work seven days a week,
for almost 10 hours each day.
Without any day-offs or Sundays.
For comparison, in this survey,
the other workers work an average of 56 hours per week.
“Our seniors hand us the couriers,
and give us all their headaches,
we have to ride our bikes for 8-12 hours.”
The number of hours an average gig worker works for,
the level of his qualification,
and the little money he makes,
hardly any other workers in our cities suffer as much.
The amazing thing is that
the qualifications of an average gig worker
are better compared to other workers’.
But at the same time,
75% of gig workers in our country
are facing financial difficulties.
On average, they earn only ₹18,000 per month,
even after working hard tirelessly.
In today’s video, friends,
come let’s understand this gig worker profession in depth.
Friends, the word ‘Gig’,
G-I-G,
means a temporary job or a performance act.
Before modern-day gig workers became popular,
usually musicians and comedians used this term.
Because the job of these performing artists is such that
they don’t get a regular salary.
They get paid for individual acts.
If a comedian does a show in a company,
it becomes a gig for him,
for which he gets paid.
The first time the word ‘Gig’ was used
for a temporary paid job
in 1952
when an influential author
Jack Kerouac wrote an article
about how he got a gig to work as a brakeman on a railroad.
Today, freelancing is also included in this category
and in the last 10 years,
in fact, in the last 4 years, after COVID,
we have seen a tremendous growth in the Gig Economy.
Now, the Gig Economy can be divided into two parts.
One is service-based gigs
and the other is knowledge-based gigs.
Services are offered by low to semi-skilled workers
like the delivery agents.
And knowledge is offered in high-skilled jobs
like consultants and data scientists.
Service workers are also called Blue-Collar Gig Workers
and knowledge workers are also called White-Collar Gig Workers.
But usually, whenever we talk about gig workers,
it is the first category that is referred to.
Those people who work for companies like Uber,
Ola, Zomato, Swiggy,
Urban Company, Porter, Zepto.
Their work is different from desk jobs.
And those people who are delivering these
digital platform services in real life.
Now, theoretically, if we see,
in comparison to normal jobs,
there are many benefits of gig economy
for the employees and employers both.
What are the benefits for the employers and the companies?
They can hire the employees as needed,
and fire them whenever they want.
There is no contract with the employee.
If they don’t like an employee,
he can be immediately removed from the job.
And if they like someone,
they can hire them immediately.
On the other hand, the employees get flexibility.
They can work when they want to.
They can work for the company they want.
They don’t need to go to any office.
They can work from anywhere.
If they don’t like a job,
they can leave it
and find another one.
It’s even possible to work for multiple companies at the same time.
Giving them an opportunity to earn extra money.
On top of it, if you have a main job,
you can do it as a side job
to earn an extra, supplementary income.
There are so many benefits to it.
It sounds too good to be true.
So you might ask, what is the problem?
The problem is that
these benefits are only theoretical.
In reality, practically speaking,
the situation is getting bad to worse.
As per NITI Aayog’s 2022 report,
India’s booming gig and platform economy,
before the COVID pandemic,
had around 3 million gig workers in the country.
But by 2021, this number
reached 7.7 million.
And this sector is expected to grow so much
that by 2030,
this number will reach 23.5 million.
The Oxford Internet Institute’s Online Labour Index
tells us that India’s online labour market share
is at 24%.
This means that India is the #1 country in the world in this regard.
What do we learn from this?
This tells us that
most people in our country
do not consider the gig economy for supplementary extra income
but as their main job.
In fact, as per Ipsos Research’s 2024 survey,
for 88% of gig workers in the country,
gig work is their primary source of income.
On the other hand, look at this number.
Flourish Ventures’ September 2020 research,
6 months after the lockdown,
90% of gig workers said that
their salaries have gone down.
47% of gig workers
weren’t able to manage their expenses
without borrowing money.
During Covid, we called them
Covid Warriors,
Frontline Warriors or even Lifelines.
But most people came to this profession due to compulsion.
The Logical Indian
covered the story of a gig worker named Karan Singh.
Karan lived in Delhi’s Paschim Vihar
and was a construction worker.
When construction work was stopped due to Covid,
he had no source to get food, water or ration.
His wife and two daughters depended on him.
And the burden of running the household kept increasing.
Then a friend told him about gig work.
And he decided to use their last savings
to get a second-hand scooter on lease.
And he became a delivery partner for a deliver platform.
Being a frontline worker meant that
he could deliver essential goods
during the COVID lockdown.
But soon after,
it became his main profession.
And today, he works for a bike-taxi service platform.
There are many such stories in our country,
where the gig economy saved people’s livelihoods.
Today, these companies
refer to their gig workers by different names.
Some bike-taxi company,
use the word Captain.
Some call them Experts.
But most of the companies use the word Partner.
Normally, when the word ‘Partner’ is used in a business,
it means that the person will share your work,
will work with you,
and the profits and losses will be shared.
But is this the case for gig workers?
The scooter or bike that a gig worker needs to do his job,
has to be bought with his own money.
The cost of petrol used,
comes out of their pockets.
Take the classic example of Uber or Ola drivers.
Suppose, a taxi driver drops you off at a place
and at that location,
he can’t find another ride.
To find a ride,
he might need to travel 15-20 km,
to a hotspot.
So, to travel those 15-20 km,
the cost of the petrol used,
does the company pay 50% of it?
Not at all.
“Suppose I’m riding my bike,
and that uses petrol worth ₹100,
if I don’t get any orders,
who will pay the ₹50 of it?
Will the company bear it?
That’s what being Partners mean.”
So the question is, what kind of a partnership is this?
Actually, friends,
the word ‘Partner’ is used
to avoid legal problems for these companies.
If those companies start calling them Employees,
then there will be a lot of responsibilities on those companies.
They will need to provide health insurance.
In case of a work-related accident
it will be the company’s liability.
And the responsibilities of paying tax and a minimum wage.
According to Oxford Internet Institute’s
Fair Work Research Project 2022,
11 Indian platforms were studied.
And not a single one of these platforms could prove
that their gig workers get
at least local living wage
after covering all work-related costs.
Centre for Labour Studies
at the National Law School, Bengaluru
and Montfort Social Institute
conducted a joint study
in which they focused on the OLA and Uber taxi drivers in Hyderabad.
They found something shocking.
that the money a driver earns after working for a day
on average 40% of that earning
is spent on petrol or diesel alone.
And most drivers
work for 12-14 hours a day on average.
Meaning, after bearing all the expenses,
and considering inflation,
if they can earn only a minimum wage,
then these gig workers
start working extra hours.
It is also worth noting
how these companies define themselves.
They call themselves Tech Aggregators,
Mediators or Facilitators.
They will never use the word Employer.
That too will create legal problems
if they become Employers and Employees.
They’ll have to bear many expenses,
and will need to take care of their employees.
They don’t want to get into these fuss,
so they call themselves tech aggregators.
These companies often claim that
they have revolutionised the market
by removing the middlemen.
But just think about it, friends.
What have they actually done is
they have become the middlemen.
On every ride, delivery, or service,
they charge 15% to 25% commission
and so have become a tech-based middleman.
And since we’re talking about these tech companies,
then it is important to know
how their software and algorithms
create more problems
for their gig workers.
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Now let’s get back to our topic.
Frontline covered an interesting case
of a gig worker named Ankur.
He has two sons.
He used to work 12-14 hours a day
for at least 6 days a week.
He used to work
as a cleaner with Urban Company.
He used to travel between Delhi and Gurgaon daily.
And one day, he met with an accident.
Because of this, the jobs and gigs scheduled for that
had to be cancelled because
he had to get himself treated.
And the next day, when he checked his account,
he found that
Urban Company had permanently blocked his account.
He was shocked to see
the reason behind this.
When he checked, the reason was clearly written.
“For cancelling more than 5 jobs a month.”
It wasn’t about 5 days,
it was about only 5 jobs.
Since he cancelled 5 gigs because of his accident,
his account was permanently blocked.
Many gig workers face this problem
where because of some random reason,
their account or their ID
is banned by these apps.
There may be many reasons behind this.
If someone calls the company and files a complaint against you.
Or your ratings decrease on the app.
Or you took some off-days.
Think about it, friends.
When I told you about the benefits of the gig economy,
the biggest benefit for employees was that
they get flexibility.
They can work when they want to.
But if there are such rules
where rejecting a certain number of jobs
can get you removed or cancelled from the app,
is there any flexibility?
This is a form of slavery.
Where you will have to work to a set extent,
and if you fail to do it,
you will be removed from the app
and you lose your job.
According to this article,
workers of Urban Company claim that
the workers should have a minimum rating of 4.7
and the response rate should be above 70%.
Moreover, not more than 5 jobs should be cancelled in a month.
By avoiding being defined as an Employer,
these companies are benefiting,
these companies then use various ways
to exploit these gig workers.
The same Frontline article gives us another example
of how, at one point, Urban Company
gave discounts to customers,
by using money out of workers’ payment.
Last year, more than 200 dark stores
run by Zomato-owned Blinkit in Delhi NCR
were shut down
because the ‘Delivery Executives’ were on strike.
What was the reason behind this?
When the Delivery Executives signed a contract with Blinkit,
the fees mentioned in the contract was ₹50 per order.
But later it was reduced to ₹25 per order.
And now it was reduced even further to
₹15 per order
with a small distance-based fee component.
A big issue here is that
these gig workers
have no channels to raise complaints against the company.
Last year, we saw a case where
Blinkit’s employees were beaten up in Delhi
because they didn’t have loose change.
Look at this case from January 2023,
where 23-year-old Mohammad Rizwan
was attacked by the customer’s dog
while delivering a Swiggy order.
To protect himself from the dog’s attack,
Rizwan fell from the third floor
and lost his life.
The customer paid ₹500,000 as compensation for this
as out-of-court settlement,
but no compensation was paid by Swiggy.
The company claimed that Rizwan
was using his brother’s account
for the deliveries.
So, for this accident,
Swiggy bore no liability.
This was a rare case
but we do see many such incidents
where people shout at gig workers
for any delay in delivery.
If the workers face any issues,
their only recourse is to use chatbots for help.
“If platform-based gig workers have problems,
in their execution of work,
or in fact, even if the customers have an issue with the execution of an order,
your only recourse is
chatting with a bot on the platform.
You’re prompted with question,
you have to choose between a set of answers,
that the bot is providing.
If you are lucky to be able to
cross a stage of conversation with the bot,
there will be a call that will be made to you.
But you don’t have a toll-free number
to which you can reach out and make a call.
you have to wait for the call to come to you.”
It’s quite rare for these apps,
to allow them to call a human representative for help.
According to Fortune India,
most companies have replaced human managers
and are using Artificial Intelligence or algorithms,
to address complaints.
For a customer, these apps are well made.
If you are using these apps to order something,
you will have multiple ways to raise complaints,
and often, you get your money back for bad orders.
But for these gig workers,
the system isn’t helpful at all.
This is why we see so many strikes.
In February 2023,
workers of Ola, Uber, and Rapido
staged a strike in Guwahati.
Because their earnings were decreasing
while the commission rate of the companies
kept on increasing.
The same month, 2,500 Ola and Uber cab drivers
protested in Hyderabad
regarding the high commission rates charged by these companies.
Two months later, in April 2023,
Blinkit’s rate cuts happened.
But despite the strikes,
the rates remained the same.
Many people don’t understand the rating system of these companies.
People think that if an Uber or Ola driver
has provided a satisfactory service,
he should be given 3 or 4 stars.
He will get 5 stars only when
he provides you an excellent service.
On the other hand, people deduct stars on minor issues.
Like, if a driver had some problem in finding the place,
or was late,
or didn’t have the exact change.
If you do the same,
then think about it from the gig workers’ perspectives.
For them,
falling below 4.5 stars often means
losing their job.
How will they run their household?
So the next time you give a rating,
5 stars should be the default.
If there are minor problems, ignore them.
Unless these workers make a big mistake.
Apart from this, do thank them
for their hard work and sincerity.
Because they work hard despite harsh conditions,
and that is truly praiseworthy.
And if we want to solve these problems,
the solution needs to be stricter laws.
Like other countries,
the traditional labour laws in India
do not cover gig workers.
And as I said,
companies can find loopholes quite easily.
By not calling themselves Employers
nor the gig workers Employees.
It was only in 2020
that the Indian government passed a Social Security Code
which included a definition of Gig Worker.
“A person who performs work
or participates in work arrangements
and earns from such activities
outside of traditional employer-employee relationship.”
It’s a loose definition.
According to this Act, a gig worker will
get many Social Security benefits
like Life and Disability Cover,
Accident Insurance,
Health and Maternity benefits,
and old age protection.
It sounds good enough,
but the biggest problem is that
this law has only been drafted.
It hasn’t been operationalised yet.
Secondly, this law has a different definition of Gig Workers
Platform workers, and Unorganised Workers.
Platform workers are those who
work outside the traditional employer-employee relationship.
but they access organisations or individuals
through an online platform
and provide services for payment.
An Uber or Ola driver
can technically be called a Gig Worker
as well as a Platform Worker.
Because there is so much overlap in these definitions,
it remains unclear
how these schemes will apply to these workers.
So, on one hand, where they are waiting for
the Central Government to implement its Social Security Code,
on the other hand, some state governments
have started taking initiative
to protect the rights of gig workers.
Rajasthan government was the first to do so
in 2023 before their state elections.
The Rajasthan Platform Based Gig Workers
(Registration and Welfare) Act.
This Bill contains five main things.
First, gig workers should be registered
with the state government.
Second, have access to social security schemes.
Third, they should have a grievance redressal mechanism.
Fourth, Welfare Boards be established and funded.
For which the state government gave ₹2 billion.
And fifth, there should be penalties
for non-compliance by companies.
The extra funds required to implement these,
would come out of an additional cess
of 1%-2% of the total bill,
on every platform-based transaction.
And because everything is carried out digitally,
everyone will know
exactly how did the work done by a worker,
contributed to that fund.
The Social Security benefits proposed to be given to the workers
include accident, health insurance, maternity, gratuity, pension,
EPF, ESIC, and even scholarships.
It sounds really good.
But how well is this law being implemented in Rajasthan?
The relevant information isn’t available online.
Only those people can tell us this
who are working in Rajasthan as gig workers.
If you are one of such people,
tell us more about this in the comments below.
After Rajasthan,
since Congress is in power in Karnataka too,
a similar law has been proposed there
a few weeks ago.
The Karnataka Platform Based Gig Workers
Social Security and Welfare Bill, 2024.
And do you know what’s interesting here?
These companies have already started protesting against this bill.
National Association of Software and Service Companies
have claimed that the bill will harm the aggregators’ business.
Allegedly, this bill provides for a minimum notice period
for terminations.
Algorithmic disclosures are also being discussed.
It wants to monitor and track different mechanisms.
So some companies say that
it will have a negative impact on their platforms
and they won’t be able to operate properly in the state.
Think about it, these companies
have a problem with
giving minimum notice period to gig workers.
The problems I listed in this video,
other countries are also facing the same problems.
And the solutions I talked about,
these solutions have already been implemented abroad.
The gig workers in Thailand and Malaysia
get health and accident insurance
which is financed by
a similar 2% Cess on every ride.
In America, the National Labour Relations Board
has encouraged Uber and Lyft drivers and other gig workers
to be organised and form labour unions.
The UK and the Netherlands
have recognised that
gig workers have been misclassified.
They are taking steps to
reclassify them as employees.
In December 2023,
the European Union passed a Platform Workers Directive.
According to this, all gig workers in European countries
will be given rights and protections.
Those who have been misclassified
as being self-employed or a freelancer
will be assumed to be regular employees.
To do this, they created 5 criteria.
There are five different criteria.
If 2 of these criteria are satisfied,
then a gig worker
will be considered an employee.
And the burden of proof is placed on these companies
in relation to all gig workers working with the company,
it is the company’s responsibility
to prove that these 5 criteria are not being satisfied.
Now that this video is already so long,
I won’t go into the legal and technical details.
Let’s leave that to the lawyers and the experts
who are working to fight for the rights of gig workers.
Kunal Kamra has made an excellent documentary
Thank you very much!
Gig economy in India, worker challenges, job insecurity, low wages, freelance jobs, gig sector growth, labor rights, unregulated work, economic impact, gig workers