PLATFORM-BASED gig workers (shortly, gig workers) belong to several occupations such as rail-hailing, food and grocery delivery, home services, etc. Their services are widening and intensifying as urbanization grows and multiple partners in a family are gainfully employed Ola, Uber, Swiggy, etc. have spread to Tier-1 cities like Pune, and the extended cities of Chennai and Mumbai for example. This is part of a world wide story.
Exploitation by Platforms, no social security
Much as the customers enjoy their delivery at their doorstep, the workers employed by these platforms due to various factors are not faring well in terms of their overall earnings and working conditions. Their protests in the last decade , strikes and logoffs have yielded limited if any results . Their demands include beibg given the status of “workers” under the relevant labour laws, the right to organize and conduct collective bargaining in good faith, fair contracts, good working conditions including reasonable hours of work, and comprehensive social security, use of toilets at work among others. The platform-aggregators do not offer any welfare benefits save minimum insurance cover possibly( often not even that ) and are not willing to engage with the workers’ unions to discuss pay-related matters.
