Gig Work and its Skewed Terms

Context: With no guarantees for better and more stable days, the new labour codes do little to provide better pay and de?nitive rights to platform workers.

The Labour Codes and their relationship with the Platform Workers/Gig Workers:

• Acknowledged as a new occupational category: in a bid to keep India’s young workforce secure as it embraces ‘new kinds of work’, in the digital economy. 

• The terms ‘gig worker’, ‘platform worker’ and ‘gig economy’ appear in the Code on Social Security. 

• Extension of Social Security:  In the Code on Social Security, 2020, platform workers are now eligible for bene?ts like maternity bene?ts, life and disability cover, old age protection, provident fund, employment injury bene?ts, etc.

• Provision of financial assistance by the Centre: The Central government can formulate welfare schemes that cover these aspects of personal and work security 
• For some states like Karnataka, where a platform focused social security scheme was in the making last year, this will possibly o?er some ?nancial assistance by the Centre. 

Issues with the Labour Codes against platform workers

• No Wage guarantee: While the platform workers can claim benefits, they cannot claim labour rights, under the Code in Wages, 2019.

• This distinction makes them beneficiaries of the State programmes. But neither allows them to go to court to demand better and stable pay nor regulate the algorithms that assign the tasks. 
• This also means that the government or courts cannot pull up platform companies for their choice of pay, or how long they ask people to work. 
• Thus, the current law does not see them as future industrial workers.

• No Social Security Guarantee:  Actualising the benefits would require political will at the Central and State government levels and how unions elicit political support. 

• The language in the Code implies that platform companies can be called upon to contribute either solely or with the government to some of these schemes, but do not mandate them.

Conclusion: The ‘platform worker’ identity has the potential to grow in power and scope, but it will be mediated by politicians, election years, rates of underemployment, and large, in vestment heavy technology companies.