The National Human Rights Commission in June issued a notice to the Secretary Ministry of Labour & Employment, GOI, based on media reports revealing that at one of the warehouses of a leading e-commerce giant in Haryana, a 24-year-old worker was asked to pledge that they would not take toilet or water breaks until they finished six trucks, each measuring 24 feet long after their team’s 30 minutes had ended.

Apparently, according to workers,  such a pledge was taken eight times and even if the workers work ten hours a day they cannot unload more than four trucks per day. The workers said the senior members even monitor restrooms and other areas to ensure employees are not wasting time. Women are the worst affected. The truck becomes hot after being parked outside, causing them to quickly exhaust themselves when unloading goods.

A female employee at the warehouse reportedly stated there are no restroom facilities available on the working sites. She has also mentioned that her department, handling customer returns, was required to take an oath to achieve the target, refrain from using the washroom, and avoid drinking water.      

On the other hand, according to a spokesperson of this e-commerce organisation, the safety and well-being of the employees remain the foremost priority and their facilities are well-equipped with heat index monitoring devices to vigilantly track temperature fluctuations. The spokesperson also said during high temperatures, employees are granted extra breaks. 

Interestingly, on the other side of the globe, the US Department of Labor in December 2022 issued a citation to the organisation after a federal safety inspection at six warehouses. The Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited the e-commerce entity in five states for failing to properly record work-related injuries and illnesses. OSHA issued citations for 14 recordkeeping violations including failing to record injuries and illnesses, misclassifying injuries and illnesses, not recording injuries and illnesses within the required time, and not providing OSHA with timely injury and illness records. The organisation faced $29,008 in proposed penalties. 

    Then again in February 2023, OSHA investigators found  exposed warehouse workers to a high risk of low back injuries and other musculoskeletal disorders. The risks were related to:

• High frequency with which employees must lift packages and other items.
• Heavy weight of the items handled by the workers.
• Employees awkwardly twisting, bending and extending themselves to lift items.
• Long hours required to complete assigned tasks.

OSHA proposed $46,875 in penalties.

THE E-COMMERCE COMPANY ORDERED TO COMPLY WITH THE  EUROPEAN UNION’S DIGITAL RULES

The organisation was instructed to hand over more information to the EU on what steps the e-commerce giant has taken to comply with the new digital rules, the European Commission has recently enquired. The query was made under the EUs law known as the Digital Services Act (DSA) which forces platforms to do more to protect consumers and increase transparency.

The Commission has asked for more information on the measures the platform has taken to comply with DSA obligation related to transparency of recommender systems in a time stipulated by the Commission. 

The latest demand is the first step in a new compliance procedure but does not itself suggest the law has been broken. But it is a move to bring such  platforms within a regulatory regime. 

ABOUT THE INDIAN GIG WORKERS

NITI Ayog has projected the size of the Indian gig workforce to be 23.5 million by 2030. Given the overall depressed employment generation scenario so far, gig work is one sector that is providing livelihood to an increasingly large number of young job-seekers. 

In the recent past, India has witnessed protests and agitations by gig workers on the issue of revenue sharing, working hours and various  working conditions and terms of employment. The decline in quality of service to the customers by the app taxi aggregators is a reflection of the stress experienced by the drivers. 

In the gig economy employment relations are either non-existent or they are very complicated. The prevailing labour law framework in India does not provide solutions to the problem of employment relations in the platform-based economy, simply because, our labour laws are inherently based on traditional employer-employee relations.   

The platform base service providers prefer to call themselves as aggregators and consider gig workers as independent contractors or associates. Aggregators have taken a stand that they provide technology and bring together independent workers and consumers.   The independent workers are owners of their own time and have a choice to join the platform for work or exist as they desire. The platforms project flexibility of work instead of traditionally defined duty hours. 

Whereas, on the other hand workers in the gig economy consider aggregators as their employers as their earnings, deductions from earnings, daily quota of work and other terms of employment are set by the aggregators. It is well known that in an app-cab operation, the price of the ride is determined by the app owner/aggregator.  The  price of a ride  depends upon  various  situations prevailing at the time when a customer is booking a ride on which the worker has no control, whereas the same situations are exploited by the aggregator to his advantage. Even,  the daily minimum number of rides the driver must complete is decided by the aggregator. The aggregator also unilaterally controls allowing a driver to join-in the system or not on a daily basis.  In this context, the gig workers seek fair treatment, continuity of work, better working conditions, access to health and other social security support. 

The central government has passed four labour codes of which only the Social Security Code 2020 mentions, Section 2(60)Platform Work, Section 2(61)Platform Worker and Section 2(35)Gig Worker. It is pertinent to note that in the definitions of Platform Work and Gig Workers clearly mention “ outside employer-employee relationship”. 

THE RAJASTHAN ACT AND THE KARNATAKA BILL FOR GIG WORKMEN

In June 2024, Karnataka introduced a new Bill, seeking to provide social security and welfare measures for platform-based gig workers in the State. In the recent past, a similar law was also enacted by  Rajasthan. Both legislations are similar in the sense that both are based on a welfare board model. This model does not address employment relations as such and is more appropriate for self-employed informal workers. The  legislation of both States do not provide institutional social security benefits such as provident funds, gratuity or maternity benefits which regular workers are legally entitled to. The welfare board models in India are poorly implemented as evidenced by the Construction Workers Welfare Act 1996  and the Unorganised Workers Social Security Act where funds are available but inadequately used. 

Further, the Karnataka bill does not address the issue of minimum wages or working hours for gig workers. The proposed Karnataka Bill,  the Code on Social Security 2020 and also the Rajasthan Act 2023, all fail to address the employment relationship in gig economy. In the absence of any concrete policy guidance at the Apex level in the country as well as at the State level the employment relationship will continue to be in a confused state and will only add credence to the argument about the Indian economy, that it is a growing economy but without regular jobs.   

– Vijay Padate

Associate Director