Opinion We, as consumers, know gig workers are exploited. So what do we owe them?
Do gig workers have a special right to our moral concern, or are they simply part of the considerable number of overworked and underpaid maids, cooks, cab drivers, garbage collectors, chowkidars, and itinerant labourers?
Does the gig agent have other, better options to choose from? If he did, would he not choose them? Of late, there has been some concern, if not outrage, about the plight of the “delivery boy” working for companies that offer fast delivery of both food and other household goods. Like an inverted pyramid, a much larger edifice of convenience and profit is erected on their backpacks.
Technological advances have made it easier to move services from stationary locations into the wherever and whenever of need or desire satisfaction. In this warp of space-time, while margins might be thin, or success a function of how much financial fuel is needed to reach an ultimate and often distant singularity of astronomical profits for investors and promoters, the guys at the bottom seem to remain there.
Do they have a special right to our moral concern, or are they simply part of the considerable number of overworked and underpaid maids, cooks, cab drivers, garbage collectors, chowkidars, and itinerant labourers that make up the 90 per cent (we are told) of those who make up the Great Indian Nation?
Are they more exposed to exigencies? Less protected? Less well-paid?
The argument, often made, that if these services were entirely stopped, they would be worse off is a non-sequitur: It doesn’t really address the problem of whether their situation can be improved and how.
Consider the famous ethical dilemma called the “trolley problem”. There are many variations, and much ink has been spilled in showing what an observer might do if confronted with the choice of saving some persons about to be run over by a train, or diverting it so it runs over fewer. The observer must choose.
We are not likely in most possible worlds to be given such options. But the point of ethical dilemmas is that they are premised on free choices that we as moral agents must make. In the case of gig workers, there are at least three levels where some choices can be made. First, of course, is the worker himself (there are, for several obvious reasons, few women at this level ). It might be argued that the guy has made his choice, accepted the conditions, whatever they are, of the terms of his employment, and that’s the end of the matter. But is it? How voluntary is this choice? Does the gig agent have other, better options to choose from? If he did, would he not choose them? In our country, it is said that people are often too poor to be unemployed. Economic serfdom is not a choice but an unwelcome condition. So the burden of choice is not immediately his. Bound by economic necessity, he may be said to have no real choice. Of course, he can protest, but apart from private expressions of dissatisfaction, he has no public forum where he can be effective in changing his condition.
At the second level, we have the consumer, those who benefit from the service the gig guy provides. What are her choices? How will they, and can they, impact the asymmetrical relations between the three (promoter, consumer, and deliverer)? Obviously, the consumer cannot directly alter the contractual terms of the employment, whether exploitative or benign. But she does have a significant role to play and several real choices to make.
The most basic intervention she can make is to give a cash tip on delivery, especially on large food orders. Some quick service orders include a (small) tip option when paying. But this will not affect the business model, only mitigate the low pay of the worker without altering the sword of the clock that hangs over his head. A more informed choice would be to opt for those platforms that don’t offer quick time delivery, and order sudden necessities in normal hours: Slower traffic during off times will impact the competition to be the first off the block. The consumer is the lynch pin in the triad; without her, the employer-employee symbiosis cannot subsist. Choosing not to choose is a powerful weapon, whose ripples will run all the way to the store.
Finally, the business that runs the platform has a duty, not so much to the ethics of compassion, but to the economics of profit and loss. Minimally, and some platforms have introduced such an option, letting the consumer choose the time, if not the day, of delivery. This could be a minimum condition for occasionally letting the tortoise amble over the finish line. Those providers that offer such alternatives could flag this as a way of giving consumers some choice, where charging extra, as they should, for the fast track might slow their profits or increase their losses. Beyond this, minimum daily wages could be mandated for this class of workers as well, but usually the market manages to circumvent most rules, or the rulers are ready themselves to change the rules of the game.
The writer taught Philosophy at Delhi University
Share
