For India's Gig Workers, the pursuit is fundamentally about Identity
What gig workers need is not just social security but identity as workers under labour laws.
Dr K R Shyam Sundar
Published on: 13 February 2025, 05:02 am
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.
What does the budget offer them
It is in these contexts, that we need to assess the recent pronouncement of the Finance Minister in offering to provide them with health coverage.
To quote her: “Gig workers of online platforms provide great dynamism to the newage (sic) services economy. Recognising their contribution, our Government will arrange for their identity cards and registration on the e-Shram portal. They will be provided healthcare under PM Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY). This measure is likely to assist nearly 1 crore gig-workers.” This is a one-off welfare scheme offered to them but social security is a wide concept.
Not workers under the Code
The Central government enacted in 2020 a Social Security Code (SSC) which recognizes “gig workers” who are “outside of traditional employer-employee relationship” [s.(2)(35)]. This definition effectively takes them out of possible coverage in other Labour Codes like the Industrial Relations Code (IRC). This is a strategic play of the Central government to keep the gig workers out of all but SSC.
