The Rajasthan Gig and Platform Workers (registration and welfare) Act is a landmark legislation. Rideshare cab services like Ola and Uber first arrived in India in 2010-11. Food delivery services, like Swiggy, came soon after, and multiservice platforms like Urban Company are now close to a decade old. These services, benefiting from the labour of lakhs of workers, have by now spread to over 250 Indian cities, and countless other kasba towns. After an initial honeymoon period, when venture capital-based bonuses were given out like candy, earnings began to dry up and workers raised their voices on a range of issues from poverty-level wages to harassment and abuse from customers. Despite this, neither the Centre nor any state government had bothered to act this far. Companies of course shirked their responsibility as employers, and labelled platform workers as “partners” to avoid benefits that would normally accrue to employees. Needless to say, they shared no profits with their “partners”, and governments have gone along with the sham of treating platform workers as independent contractors.
Hence, the very act of recognising gig/platform workers by ensuring that every worker on any platform has a unique ID that would anchor all future benefits for them makes the Act a landmark one. The Act is a creative challenge to all other state governments and of course, the central government to protect India’s young workforce that is being absorbed into the exploitative gig sector. It is simultaneously an inspiration for numerous governments across the world that are embarking on building new regulatory frameworks for a set of companies that have, in the name of innovation, had no hesitation in breaking all the rules in the book. Celebrating the passage of the Act on Monday evening, Ashish Singh, one of the leaders of the fledgling gig workers union in Rajasthan said, “I hope this sets an example for the rest of India. We could not have made this victory happen without the many labour unions and social movements of Rajasthan, especially the Soochna Evam Rozgar Adhikar Abhiyan anchoring and supporting us. It is now our job to strengthen our union in Rajasthan, and take the Act to every other state in India.”
The legislation is not perfect. It has many shortcomings, some of which we identify later in this essay. However, three features of the Act make it the first of its kind in India. First, given the long runway that platform companies have been allowed to stabilize and turn profitable, the Act is uncompromising in ensuring that a fee is levied on every transaction as a source of revenue for the welfare fund. With most companies using the “upfront pricing” model where the customer is given a price upfront, and the worker does not know what that sum is, the worker then has no idea as to the effective commission rate being imposed on that transaction. A transaction-level fee calculation forces this data into the open.
Second, the Act creates a tripartite welfare board made up of government, companies and workers to administer the fund – the ILO framework that enables sectoral bargaining, first used successfully in the unorganised sector by Maharashtra’s Hamaal Panchayat. But the gains from the tripartite board go beyond the obvious. Companies like Uber have over the last several years sought out unions that are seemingly pliable and often do the work of the companies. A tripartite board-administered fund with the revenue source being the company, serves as an inoculation against corrupt rogue unions from striking such deals because the fund can never come under just a single company’s control nor the control of any one party.
Third, the Act is unique in forcing the companies to give up control over transaction-level data as it requires the data to reside in a government-controlled database with an information system/app front end through, which workers have access to data. In other words, the information sharing part of the Act is a first step toward transparency, which the companies have long resisted. If the data-sharing aspect of the Act is implemented well, it will for the first time allow workers, the public and policymakers alike to understand the industry and drive it towards a more sustainable and progressive direction.
The weakness of the Act lies a two levels – on sidestepping the issue of employee misclassification, and some of the ambiguities that remain in the Act as passed. There is growing convergence across the world that many gig workers do meet broad definitions of being employees and deserve all the protections afforded to employees/workers. The Rajasthan Act sidesteps this issue by continuing to categorise the gig companies as aggregators – a definition of choice for the companies that gives them some protection. In as much as it is the first intervention in a field of struggle, it would have been a difficult issue to resolve. But the pathway to this resolution is through a clear implementation of the act as it has been passed. All legislation are implemented (or not) based on the rules and systems created for its execution. There are several areas of the Act – from grievance resolution to data sharing – where bringing effective rules into place will be the next stage. Uber and co have a long and terrible history of refusing to follow the law. It is therefore crucial that the worker mobilisation that made this legislation possible must be continued into a period of implementation.
The Rajasthan legislation is a vehicle for immediate relief as well as a promise for the future. Armed with transaction-level data, a commitment to grievance resolution and recognition as workers rather than misclassified as ‘partners’ the new union in the industry, the Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers – can now forge ahead to secure further rights and remedies, not only in Rajasthan but across India. As Sheikh Salauddin, the General Secretary of IFAT put it succinctly, “We now have two tasks ahead of us. First, to turn the Rajasthan Act into an exceptionally strong one by implementing it through effective rules. Second, to take it as a starting model to other states so that they can improve it in their legislation”.
The writer is Co-Founder and Organizing Committee member of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (NYTWA) and President of the International Alliance of App-based Transport Workers (IAATW). He is an Associate Professor of Information Systems at Rider University, NJ.
