Lawyers, activists and scholars moot equal pay for equal work for gig workers

Bengaluru: The Centre for Labour Studies at NLSIU, Bengaluru, discussed and challenged some of the commonly held notions around gig working in light of the draft legislation regarding gig workers. The event was held on Saturday. 

National Law School of India University (NLSIU) organised this seminar after the surge in legislative efforts to regulate the working working conditions for platform workers across the country. Karnataka with the introduction of the The Karnataka Platform Based Gig Workers (Social Security and Welfare) Bill became the third state after Rajasthan and Jharkhand to join this effort. 

In the first panel titled -- 'Situating Working Conditions of Platform Workers', panelists Prof Balaji Parthasarthy, principal investigator, Fairwork India and Vinay Sarthy, Karnataka United Food Delivery Partners Union challenged the proposition that gig workers have flexible work hours and with high pay.

"Of the 1,380 workers that we studied over the last four years, only 21.8% were actually earning the local minimum wage after accounting for costs such as fuel and vehicle maintenance," Parthasarthy said. 

Parthasarthy pointed out that 65% of the workers who, despite putting in 12 hours or more, are still not making the minimum wage. "This actually challenges the claim that gig-work is just part-time work. How can you put in 12 hours a day and then claim this is a part-time job? It's a very strange claim," he remarked. 

Going over the slot-based system, which mandates platform workers to book time slots in advance for their work, Parthasarthy said this exposes the myth that gig-work is flexible in nature. "The slot-based system also gives preferential allocation by using performance criteria to categorize platform workers into tiers and to force them to compete for slots with one another," he added. 

Vinay Sarthy said that in the name of flexibility everything is shattered. "After the slot-based system and the introduction of tiers, things have become very bad. If you want the diamond slot you have to work between 15 and 18 hours a day," he lamented. 

He said that workers should get equal pay for equal work. "The tier system violates this principle by giving different payouts for different tiers. They also give higher payout for someone who takes a break from work to attract him back into gig-work. Someone who works regularly is paid lower," he added.