For India’s gig workers, who are increasing in numbers but are perched precariously on the edge of the unregulated labour pool, the Karnataka Platform-based Gig Workers (Social Security and Welfare) Bill, 2024, offers a welcome reprieve, but still stops short of providing them with the security of being employees.
A rights-based legislation, the draft Bill aims to prevent arbitrary dismissals, provide human grievance redress mechanisms, and to bring more transparency into the opaque tangle of automated monitoring and algorithm-based payments.
Karnataka’s law also offers social security through a welfare board and fund, with contributions from the government and the aggregator, either through a cut from every transaction on the app, or as a percentage of the platform’s turnover in the State.
Noting that many of the firms that own these platforms report minimal profits, workers’ unions have rightly demanded that the welfare fee is charged as a cess on each transaction.
Sceptics note the moribund nature of other unorganised sector welfare boards, but one advantage of mandatory registration with such a board is that it will make gig workers visible in the eyes of the law.
A similar legislation in Rajasthan, enacted by the predecessor Congress government, has been effectively put into cold storage by the BJP government.
At the national level, comprehensive legislation is needed not just to set minimum wages, reasonable working hours and conditions and robust social security but also to provide gig workers with the coveted status of ‘employees’.
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