In Telangana draft for gig workers, minimum wage, maternity benefits

According to the policy, workers will be registered with the government on an App. “We will soon launch the App and the workers will be allowed to self-declare their basic details including the platforms they are linked to. This will then be cross-verified with the platforms and the registration process will be complete,” E Gangadhar, Additional Commissioner of Labour, Telangana, told The Indian Express.

The policy will be valid for three years after which a review will be undertaken to determine its scale and impact. “We will finalise the policy only after stakeholder consultations. All recommendations of the draft policy will be discussed at length in June,” Gangadhar said.

The policy, drafted by Forum for Good Governance, an NGO, in consultation with the state labour department, also requires aggregator platforms to register with the state government — transport department, in the case of ride sharing aggregators, and labour department, in the case of food delivery platforms.

Besides those employed with ride sharing and food and grocery delivering services, the policy would cover those working with logistic services such as Rapido, e-marketplace services, healthcare service providers, travel and hospitality services, content and media services, and any other platforms providing goods and services.

While the policy aims to provide basic social security to gig workers, it does not touch upon severance pay, a key issue in this sector, given the many instances of summary termination of workers. When asked, Gangadhar said, “The aggregator companies do not define their relationship with workers in terms of an employee and an employer; they just term it as a ‘partnership’.”

However, the policy does say the government would specify minimum wages for the workers. “The government will notify minimum wages for all workers under each category of the gig economy,” states the draft policy.

Further, aggregator services such as Ola, Uber, Swiggy and Zomato, among others, will have to provide accidental insurance of Rs 5 lakh to gig workers on job. It also calls upon the aggregators to contribute a fee based on their annual turnover towards a welfare fund for workers. This fund may be managed by a welfare board.

The policy also recommends setting up grievance redressal mechanisms at the company level and at the state level for the workers. Each aggregator should have a dispute resolution committee, the policy states.