With delivery workers fulfilling orders for Zomato-owned Blinkit on strike for two consecutive weeks, the company has now started shuttering down some of its dark stores in Delhi-National Capital Region. Anvitii Rai looks at the reasons behind the strike and gig worker issues in the country
Behind the Blinkit strike
The strikes began roughly two weeks ago when Blinkit rolled out its new payout structure for delivery partners, under which the minimum payout per delivery has been slashed to Rs 15 per delivery from Rs 25. The new structure also bases incentives on the distance covered to execute the order. The latter was also a payout that was slashed from Rs 50 per delivery last year. This has resulted in a significant earnings drop for the delivery workers, who, on an average, now earn Rs 600-700 a day as opposed to Rs 1,200 earlier.
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Workers are demanding that the old structure be restored. Notably, the old structure consisted of delivery and fuel incentives, which, as per media reports, have been trimmed as well.
How Blinkit has responded
Blinkit has shuttered down dark stores (that exclusively house goods earmarked for online retail) in Gurugram and Noida, and disabled the IDs of the workers associated with them. In a message on the app, the workers have been asked to raise a support ticket for any queries.
Meanwhile, the workers have approached the Gurugram district commissioner, following which the Haryana labour department sent a notice to the company.
As per various media reports, the payout restructure was carried out by the company in response to rising losses — The Indian Express reported that the company posted a loss of Rs 288 crore and a revenue of Rs 300 crore in its first quarterly report (Q3FY23) after being acquired by Zomato. The shuttering of shops has resulted in a jump in order values for Blinkit competitors — one estimate pegs this volume jump between 25% and 50%.
Govt and gig workers
Thanks to the pandemic, the lack of social security that marks gig economy jobs became clear. Platforms recognise gig workers as ‘partners’ and not as workers; so, they don’t have social security rights, paid leaves, etc. Besides, pay negotiation is severely curtailed. In September 2021, the Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers moved the Supreme Court demanding that the Centre ease the suffering of workers affected by the pandemic by declaring ‘gig workers’ and ‘platform workers’ as ‘unorganised workers’, so they come under the Unorganised Workers Social Security Act, 2008. The hearing for the same is pending.
In July 2022, Union labour minister Bhupender Yadav said that the states were finalising the adoption of the Labour Codes, and these would be implemented at an “appropriate time”; many major states are yet to do this. Rajasthan is mulling a law on gig worker rights.
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Fate of gig workers elsewhere in the world
In the US, a California appeals court overturned the state’s Proposition 22, which sought to classify workers on platform-based apps as employees rather than independent contractors; however, the same was reversed by a three-justice bench last month.
Gig workers are being increasingly recognised as employees in other jurisdictions across the world, though. The UK Supreme Court struck down Uber’s bid to classify its drivers as contractors in February 2021.
The same occurred in Switzerland in July 2022, with both courts stating that Uber acted more as an intermediary between drivers and passengers, and due to its strict standards of performance, must give drivers the benefits reserved for employees. New Zealand followed suit in October 2022, when its employment court declared that these workers had an employer-employee relationship with such companies.
Similar stances were held by courts in Israel and Mexico. The Spanish government also reached an agreement with labour unions and business organisations to recognise gig workers as employees in March 2021 and adopted legislation to that effect in May that year.