Ola, Uber and Dunzo among worst platforms for gig workers, bigbasket tops fair work norms list

Ride hailing platform Ola and tech-enabled logistics company Porter scored zero in fair work standards for gig workers on a scale of 0-10, according to Fairwork India report 2023. bigbasket topped the list with six points.

The 'Fairwork India 2023' report, spearheaded by the Centre for IT and Public Policy (CITAPP) at the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B), in association with Oxford University, examined Amazon Flex, bigbasket, BluSmart, Dunzo, Flipkart, Ola, Porter, Swiggy, Uber, Urban Company, Zepto and Zomato for the survey.

Fairwork India interviewed workers from 12 platforms in four cities — Bengaluru, Delhi, Kochi, and Thiruvananthapuram — for minimum standards of fair work in the platform economy. The agency examined the working conditions of platform workers on digital labour platforms in India.

A key highlight of the report is that none of the 12 platforms evaluated on five principles, including fair pay, fair conditions, fair contracts, fair management, and fair representation, managed to get a perfect score.

Flipkart, bigbasket and Urban Company were the only platforms with a minimum wage policy to ensure that all their workers earn at least the hourly local minimum wage after factoring in work-related costs. However, no platform made the second point of the fair pay principle, which requires platforms to provide sufficient evidence that workers earn at least the local living wage after work-related costs.

However, Urban Company has made a public commitment to ensure that its workers earn at least the local living wage after factoring in work-related costs.

Amazon Flex, bigbasket, BluSmart, Flipkart, Swiggy, Urban Company, Uber, Zepto and Zomato were awarded the first point for providing adequate safety equipment and periodic safety training to their workers.

Only bigbasket, Swiggy, Urban Company, Zepto and Zomato got the second point for providing workers with accident insurance coverage at no additional cost, monetary compensation for income loss in cases where they were unable to work due to medical reasons other than accidents, and for ensuring that workers’ standing was not negatively affected when they returned after a break taken with prior notification given to the platform.

Seven out of 12 platforms — bigbasket, BluSmart,Dunzo, Swiggy, Urban Company, Zepto and Zomato — ensure accessibility and comprehensibility of their contracts, and have a protocol for data protection and management of worker data.

bigbasket, BluSmart, Urban Company, Zepto, and Zomato have also adopted a change notification clause in their contracts, reducing asymmetries in liability (such as by a provision to compensate workers for losses due to app malfunctions), adopting a code of conduct for their subcontractors, and making the variables of pricing transparent where dynamic pricing was used.

Amazon Flex, bigbasket, BluSmart, Flipkart, Swiggy,and Zomato provide due process in decisions affecting workers, and channels for workers to appeal disciplinary actions.

According to the report, there was sufficient evidence that only BluSmart and Swiggy have institutionalised the conduct of regular, external audits to check for biases in their work allocation systems and they’ve also adopted policies against the discrimination of platform workers.

No platform got a point for this principle this year, pointing towards the lack of representation through a collective body or trade union. “It is disconcerting that despite the rise in platform worker collectivisation across the country, over the past four years, there was insufficient evidence from any platform that showed a willingness to recognise a collective body of workers,” the report noted.