Bengal CITU Gears up to Unionise Gig Economy Workers

Kolkata: The fast-growing workforce of delivery boys, who keep crazy work hours and are bereft of any job or social security benefits, are among the various categories of the services sector who are exploited as they are not organised.

Now, the West Bengal Unit of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) is planning to tap into these new services sector, known as the ‘gig economy, to organise category-wise unions affiliated to it, CITU state secretary Anadi Sahu told Newsclick in an interview.

Sahu said the initiative was spurred by Surjyakanta Mishra, the state secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist, who said he saw among thousands of workers in the new service sectors an urge to unionise themselves under “compulsions of circumstances” in their field of work.

Those in the state CITU’s radar are food delivery boys, app-based cab drivers, delivery boys for a host of articles and goods ordered online and even workers in the IT sector, which is largely non-unionised despite being in existence much longer than the Zomatos, Swiggys, Ubers, Olas or other e-commerce outlets.

Sahu said the state CITU unit’s fresh efforts follow its “modest success” in launching a new union of cab drivers in ride-hailing companies. In Kolkata, the number of yellow taxis is already fast declining as cab-hailing companies have increased their presence.

The union launched by CITU has been able to rope in about 5,000 cab drivers as its members in the past one year or so, said Sahu. In the country as a whole, tentative estimates put the number of such cab drivers at between 14 and 15 lakh.

The central trade union’s next target is the category of delivery boys, for which it will soon start an internal survey.

The idea is to have a separate union as this category has a fast-increasing workforce which, because of tough service conditions and virtual absence of social security, is a disgruntled lot and is desperately looking for “relief and humanitarian approach towards them”, Sahu said.

In Kolkata, particularly after 9 p.m, food delivery boys can be seen rushing to earmarked localities to fulfil their assignments. Already fatigued, they often take a few minutes’ rest at designated ice-cream shops. At times, three or four food delivery boys happen to meet at the same ice-cream shop, which gives them an opportunity to discuss common issues and manage a few minutes to make personal calls, as they are required to deliver food till late night. Some CITU leaders have been trying to persuade such boys to become members of the proposed union and have got feelers that earlier apathy towards trade unions seems to be waning, Sahu said.

Gig economy jobs, mainly in big cities and towns, do bring in money that may appear to be “not that bad”, but what is being ignored is that these jobs do not bring any benefits that regular jobs bring, such as leave, limit on work hours, overtime, job security and health benefits. Rotating attrition is rampant in the gig economy with the same people moving from one job to another.

It’s a labour market characterised by prevalence of short-term contracts or freelance, as opposed to permanent jobs. Moreover, workers are constantly subjected to last-minute scheduling. It’s a kind of free market economy in which temporary positions are common and organisations contract with independent workers for short-term engagements.

The meaning of ‘gig’ in The Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary is -- a light two-wheeled one-horse carriage for rowing or sailing ; a rowing boat specially for racing/an engagement of entertainer, specially of musicians to play jazz or dance music, usually for a single appearance/a kind of fishing spear. Racing (rushing to deliver) and engagement for a single appearance (short-term contract) –- this part of the meaning provides a connect with a gig economy worker’s job. Gig, in one backgrounder, is also described as an acronym, an abbreviation or a slang word.

Sahu pointed out that the work conditions in this kind of job market are such that there is need to organise all these workers – food delivery, e-commerce suppliers, app-based cab drivers etc.

In West Bengal, the total membership of CITU unions currently stands at between 14 and 15 lakh. “There has been an erosion in our strength because of the disruptive activity of the labour arm of the ruling Trinamool Congress,” said Sahu, alleging that “their workers forcibly occupied offices of our unions, organised defections from our unions and set up unions in sectors where earlier we had a dominating presence”.

Closure of factories is also a big reason for the decline in trade union membership, to the current level from over 19 lakh in the past five years or so, Sahu added.

However, the Bengal secretary of CITU is hopeful that they should be able to retrieve their membership strength gradually because organisationally it was better placed to attract “non-unionised” workers in the gig economy, where the situation has been going from bad to worse.