Opinion Two gig workers write: This is why those who Deepinder Goyal calls ‘miscreants’ go on strike

As gig workers working with Blinkit and Zepto for over a year in Delhi, we treat strikes almost as routine. Earnings in quick commerce have a very short lifecycle, with new players offering better incentives and minimum guarantees as they capture new markets. These guarantees last for a few weeks or months, and then follow a downward trend.

Conditions attached to incentives — hours of work, mandatory shifts, peak and non-peak hours — change every day. We are left to chase targets in this game, and even a single missed target means 20 to 30 per cent of our daily income being shaved off. Festivals and other peak demand days offer increased surges and incentives, but immediately after that, these drop sharply. Companies manage to recover their profits, while riders who are dependent on gig work end up paying the price.

Discontent also comes from the absolute lack of any managerial care towards riders. We bring our own vehicles and pay for their costs. Many stores don’t even provide designated parking spaces, drinking water, rest spots, or clean bathrooms. Riders face harassment by police on the streets and continue delivering through cold, dust, pollution, and extreme heat. Companies offer health insurance, but these are hard to claim, so most riders go out of pocket in case of accidents. In fact, when we call customer support to report an accident, the first question we are asked is about the damage to the order — and in case of damage, we face a penalty of the order value. Riders are also terminated very frequently without any reason whenever companies have a surplus of workers. In a recent example, a rider’s ID was terminated for ringing the doorbell at a customer’s house, only to be reinstated after signing a written “maafinama.”

In this environment, strikes can be triggered by the smallest of changes. At Zepto’s Neb Sarai store in Delhi, riders went on strike on December 1, demanding an increase in night-time surge. This was coordinated by a few riders on their WhatsApp group, and the next day, most riders went on strike. Zepto responded by permanently blocking the IDs of 86 workers. By December 4, the store had hired a completely new fleet of workers to replace the terminated ones, and work continued as usual without an increase in the night surge.

This is just one example of the kinds of strikes that happen every other week across the dark stores. Companies have standard responses, with fleet coaches convincing riders to continue work, threatening or actually terminating the loudest riders who seem like leaders, and offering “multipliers” at the time of a strike to coerce riders into working. In some cases, police are called to disperse riders from assembling outside their own workplace. Rarely, companies meet the riders’ demands to reinstate existing incentives or surges, only to drop them again a week later.

This is the backdrop to the larger round of mobilisation that happened at the end of December, fuelled by social media influencers who are popular among riders. Videos announcing strikes started going viral among riders a few weeks in advance, with unions stepping in to support the mobilisation in some cities. Companies responded as usual, with messages to riders’ groups warning them against going on strike. In Delhi, riders were given a surge of 100 per cent for each order delivered between 12 to 6 am, with an overflow of riders who work only on festival days for quick cash. This fragmentation by design makes it nearly impossible to coordinate a large strike in the delivery workforce. Deepinder Goyal described these frustrated riders as miscreants and political agents without addressing a single demand we put forward. Given these circumstances, the struggle continues to gain concessions from an uncaring system.

Saif and Sagar Shourya, gig workers associated with the Rajdhani App Workers Union. This article was compiled and translated from Hindi by Ambika Tandon, affiliated with Rajdhani App Workers Union, CITU