Sreeja (name changed) could not control her tears when she saw her earnings after a long day on the road last week. A food delivery worker with Zomato in Thiruvananthapuram, she usually begins her day’s duty at 7 a.m. and clocks 12 to 14 hours daily, taking only a short break for lunch at around 3 p.m. All that she got that day after putting in those long hours was ₹700. Exasperated, she shared a voice message in a WhatsApp group consisting of 25 women riders like her.
“It turned out many of them often had similar experiences like mine. I came into platform-based gigs following the death of my husband. Earlier, I used to work in the retail field. I chose the sector because I heard that the flexibility in timings will allow me time to take care of my children. Yes, it is flexible, but if you want to earn enough to run a home, you will have to slog for at least 12 hours,” says Sreeja.
This has not always been the case with the platform-based food delivery sector in Kerala, and across the country. Some of those who signed up as delivery personnel as soon as Uber Eats started operations in Kerala in 2018, as the first such initiative, have seen better days with daily earnings of up to ₹1,500.
Azhar, with four years of experience and now working with Swiggy, is one of those. He has seen the daily and weekly incentives plummet periodically, as also the allowances for petrol and for delivering on rainy days.
“In the initial days, I used to spend around ₹200 a day for petrol. Now, with petrol prices shooting up, I end up spending as much as ₹400 on some days. Meanwhile, the company increased the minimum delivery target from ₹650 to ₹700 to be eligible for a daily incentive of ₹200. The reason cited was that it was forced to spend so much on purchasing masks and sanitisers for us during COVID-19,” he says.
The Zomato delivery agents in Thiruvananthapuram, who went on an indefinite strike in August, withdrew it after company officials agreed to their demands during conciliatory talks chaired by Additional Labour Commissioner K. Sreelal. The delivery agents were striking work over arbitrary changes in their incentive payments, which have drastically reduced their daily earnings.
While this was the case till last month, it has now been replaced with a shift system which makes someone logging in from 7 a.m. till 7 p.m. eligible for an incentive of ₹220. The shift system consists of hourly slots, with the workers getting more payment for working during peak hours. In the end, it is long hours that fetches some money.
Around two lakh youth as well as middle-aged persons in Kerala are employed either full-time or part-time with various food delivery aggregators. According to a study by the NITI Aayog in June this year, a total of 77 lakh workers are engaged in the country’s gig economy, which includes everything from food and taxi aggregators to various platform-based services. The gig workforce is expected to expand to 2.35 crore workers by 2029-30, as per the study. But, for such a large workforce, no laws have been framed yet to govern the sector, paving the way for their exploitation.
Early in 2020, Zomato acquired Uber Eats. By this time, Swiggy had also gained a foothold in the State. The first rumblings of protest from gig workers in Kerala were witnessed in June 2020, when Swiggy delivery personnel in Thiruvananthapuram, who were working tirelessly during the pandemic, logged off from the network against the slashing of weekly incentive from ₹1,500 to ₹1,000 and incentive per delivery for places located more than five km away, from ₹50 to ₹25. That protest did not meet with much success, owing to the lack of organisational power and the challenges of sustaining the struggle.
The companies quelled the protest by deploying temporary delivery workers from other regions or using bouncers, methods which the delivery agents allege were used in the ongoing strike of Swiggy workers in Kochi. According to them, the companies reroute the orders to third party applications, including Shadowfax and Loadshare with their own set of riders, which in turn reduce the number of orders available for the ones working directly with the company. The third-party applications are useful as strike-breaking tools too.
Online food delivery workers take out a protest march to the office of the food delivery company Swiggy in Kochi recently. Around 4,000 workers are on an indefinite strike by in Ernakulam district. | Photo Credit: THULASI KAKKAT
Dealing with a faceless system has been the biggest challenge for the workers in the sector. Arbitrary terminations without seeking any explanation are common, they say. One of the clauses in the recent terms and conditions sent to them by Zomato, which was reversed following protests, reads: “Zomato may terminate the agreement and deny delivery partners access to the Zomato platform at any time without a reason for such termination”.
Zomato delivery workers went on strike twice this year in Thiruvananthapuram after the company unilaterally removed the incentives, including pick up charge and waiting charge.
The second one was in August after the implementation of a new gig system recently, which brought down their daily earnings by half. This time they had the organisational support of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), under which was formed the All-India Gig Workers’ Union. This became the first successful strike for the delivery workers as Zomato officials, at a meeting with the Labour Commissioner, agreed to reinstate the rain surge bonus, provide better incentives, and issue show-cause notices before taking disciplinary action.
The faceless system also opened up a little, with team leaders beginning to respond to calls from delivery agents and attempting to address the issue. Earlier, they never used to pick calls, say the workers.
“Once, before these protests, one of the women delivery workers went to a house for delivery for which the customer had opted for cash on delivery. When she asked for the cash, he said he will pay ₹2,000 extra, if she would ‘spend time’ with him. She raised the issue with the company, but there was no response. On the other hand, if a customer faces even a small issue, be it delay or any other inconvenience, we will be questioned and even our IDs are blocked,” says James, a delivery agent.
Problems persisted, especially in regions where protests did not happen, and new ones kept appearing, leading to recurring protests, in areas where they have happened. Benedict, a Zomato rider in Kochi, bought a new motorcycle on February 18 this year. Even though he had a period of 45 days in between when he did not use the motorcycle at all, as he had opted out of delivery work to take up another temporary job, his odometer now reads 33,323. The wear and tear that the vehicles sustain, from running 200-300 km daily, is never accounted for in the payments. Even when accidents happen, the team leaders often ask only whether the food is still fit for delivery, and not anything on the condition of the vehicle or whether the rider had any injury, say delivery workers.
In Kochi, the Swiggy delivery workers’ strike began after the company refused to heed the demand for an increase in delivery charges from ₹20 for delivery within four-km radius to ₹35 for 2.5 km radius. Although, in an effort to avert the strike, the Labour Officer negotiated with the workers and brought this demand down to ₹30 for four km, the management refused to budge, sticking to a maximum of ₹23.
“The strike began in the Panampilly Nagar zone under the aegis of the Food Online Delivery Workers Union affiliated with the All-India Trade Union Congress. Soon, riders from all the zones joined in. The company has made many attempts to break the strike, but the workers have held strong,” says Pradeep Raju, one of the striking delivery workers.
They have drawn their lessons from fellow Swiggy delivery workers in Thiruvananthapuram, who, after days of protests, forced top officials of the company, including a vice president and assistant vice presidents, to come down to the city for a meeting with the Additional Labour Commissioner.
According to a delivery worker who was part of the meeting, the company officials were particularly stingy, “negotiating for a whole day to limit the delivery charge increase to ₹1”. Finally, after two days, an agreement was signed on October 27, to increase the base pay to ₹25 for 2.5 km radius. The company is yet to honour the agreement, as riders are still being paid at the old rate. Though the delivery workers have given an ultimatum, they are now being asked to forget that agreement and negotiate again. Now, the Zomato workers in Kochi are also getting ready to strike work, demanding a better incentive structure.
“The companies are branding us as partners to deny us the rights as workers. They think that bowing to the just demands of the trade unions will lead to similar demands in other States. We have no intention to strike work. If the workers are paid sufficient wages and incentives, as they used to be paid, no strike will happen. Companies such as Swiggy have enough money to invest in IPL cricket. With the companies persisting with such attitudes towards workers, we have even begun thinking of floating a platform in the cooperative sector, similar to Kerala Savaari for hailing taxis,” says D.S. Balachandran, a delivery worker and State treasurer of the Gig Workers’ Union.
The delivery workers have studied the unjust nature of delivery charges by acting as customers themselves. One worker who ordered from a restaurant near his home in Thiruvananthapuram found that the company was charging him ₹46 as delivery charge, while the man who delivered it got only ₹10. Also, the tips that customers pay through the mobile app often gets held up. Even restaurateurs have started feeling the pinch with the company’s cut for a single order going up from 18% initially to as much as 36% at times.
The few women delivery workers have struggles of their own, especially in accessing toilets. Most restaurants deny them access to toilets. Drinking water is also provided only by a handful of restaurants.
Labour Minister V. Sivankutty told The Hindu that the government is considering measures to ensure minimum wages for workers in the gig economy.
“It is a sector in which so many young people are working, spending hours more than the stipulated time in the other sectors. So, they will need to have a higher minimum wage compared to the rest, especially so considering the skyrocketing fuel prices. The Minimum Wages Advisory Board might take a call on it,” he says.
The Hindu’s attempts to contact Swiggy officials met a dead-end with none of them being ready to speak directly. Responses to e-mails to the official id came from a PR agency, which could only provide prepared statements.
“Swiggy has enabled a consistent and reliable income opportunity for hundreds of delivery partners in Kochi. On average, the weekly payout of our active delivery partners in the city has increased close to 20% in the last 12 months and remains industry best. We are currently speaking to delivery partners to help them understand their payouts better and encourage them to return to work. We regret the inconvenience to our users and hope to resume services soon,” reads one of the statements.
Meanwhile, patience is running thin among the delivery workers, many of whom came into the sector after losing their jobs during the pandemic. Gig industry buzzwords like ‘flexibility’ and ‘freedom’, which attracted them to it, now make them laugh.
Published - November 24, 2022 07:15 pm IST
