Only 2 Out of 11 Ecommerce Platforms Have Minimum Wage Policy for Gig Workers, Finds Report

New Delhi: The festival season has kicked in for everyone, but not for thousands of gig workers who can be seen zipping across urban India, sometimes not even stopping to eat or rest. Sporting T-shirts as mobile advertisements for their ecommerce platforms, do these workers even get living wages that secures them and their families a decent life?

A study by Fairwork India, which scored 11 top aggregators on a scale of 10 on fair wages, fair contracts, fair working conditions, fair representation, found most of them “not committed” to ensuring a living wage to their workers (who some of them refer to as partners), and none scoring beyond 6.

The platforms studied were Amazon Flex, Bigbasket, BluSmart, Flipkart, Ola, Porter, Swiggy, Uber, Urban Company, Zepto and Zomato.

The report found that only Bigbasket and Urban Company have a minimum wage policy that guarantees hourly local minimum wage after factoring in work-related costs.

What’s more, none of these platforms were willing to recognise the workers’ right to collectively bargain or unionise, which is a “vital dimension of fairness at work”.

The report said it found it “disconcerting that despite the rise in platform worker collectivisation across the country over the past six years, there was insufficient evidence from any platform to show a willingness to recognise a collective body of workers.”

The report, Fairwork India Ratings 2024: Labour Standards in the Platform Economy, was written by researchers from the Centre for IT and Public Policy, International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B), and the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford.

The report evaluated the conditions of work across 11 platforms in India at location-based services in sectors, such as domestic and personal care, logistics, food delivery, and transportation.

“Each company was awarded a score out of 10 according to the Fairwork Principles: fair pay, fair conditions, fair contracts, fair management and fair representation. Each score was determined based on a combination of desk research, worker interviews conducted in Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, and-when possible-evidence provided by the platforms,” said the report.

“This year witnessed gig workers’ welfare increasingly gain attention in political manifestos and legislative initiatives. But with the implementation of these efforts remaining uncertain, and platforms redefining gig work, research and advocacy to improve the conditions of gig workers are ever more relevant,” said Professors Balaji Parthasarathy and Janaki Srinivasan, the principal investigators of the team, in a statement.

Among the key findings on ‘fair pay’, the report found that only Bigbasket and Urban Company provided evidence of a “minimum wage” policy.

“No platform was able to evidence that all of their workers earn the local living wage after costs, so none were awarded the second point for Fair Pay,” said the report.

On ‘fair working conditions’, the study found that Amazon Flex, Bigbasket, BluSmart, Swiggy, Urban Company, Zepto and Zomato were able to prove that they provide adequate safety equipment and periodic safety training to workers on their platforms.

Amid a job that is prone to road mishaps, “only Bigbasket, Swiggy, Urban Company, Zepto and Zomato evidenced that their companies provide workers with accident insurance coverage at no additional cost, monetary compensation for income loss in cases they are unable to work for medical reasons other than accidents, and ensuring a worker’s standing is not negatively affected when they return after a break taken with prior notice to the platform.”

 As for “fair” work contracts, six out the 11 --  Bigbasket,
BluSmart, Swiggy, Urban Company, Zepto, and Zomato -- provided evidence that they ensure “the accessibility and comprehensibility of their contracts, and have protocols for the protection and management of worker data.”

“Bigbasket, BluSmart, Swiggy, Zepto, and Zomato, also evidenced the adoption of a change notification clause in their contracts, reducing asymmetries in liability (such as by a provision to compensate workers for losses due to app malfunctions and outages), the adoption of a Code of Conduct for their subcontractors, and making the variables influencing pricing transparent where dynamic pricing is used,” the report said.

As regards ‘fair management”, Amazon Flex, Bigbasket, BluSmart, Flipkart, Swiggy, Urban Company and Zomato were awarded the “first point” for evidencing due process in decisions affecting workers and channels for workers to appeal disciplinary actions.

“There was sufficient evidence from BluSmart, Swiggy, Urban Company and Zomato of regular external audits to check for biases in their work allocation systems, in addition to policies against discrimination,” the report said.

When it comes to the right to collectively bargain or unionise, a “vital dimension of fairness at work”, the report found it “disconcerting that despite the rise in platform worker
collectivisation across the country over the past six years, there was insufficient evidence from any platform to show a willingness to recognise a collective body of workers.”

Fairwork is an international research project that studies the working conditions of platform workers in more than 30 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and South America. The work is coordinated by Oxford Internet Institute and the Social Science Research Centre Berlin.