India’s female gig workers: digital strike opens new battleground for better conditions

In what is believed to be India’s first-ever ‘digital’ labour strike, female gig workers working for online platforms withdrew their labour on Diwali day to draw public attention to their poor working conditions and the lack of labour rights in the gig economy.

The strike, which was called by the Gig and Platform Workers Union (GIPSWU), India’s first women-led gig workers’ union based in Delhi, saw thousands of female gig workers turning off their phones, observing ‘digital silence’ and posting images of themselves on social media of themselves at home with their families rather than working, on what is one of the busiest times of the year for online platform services, such as cleaning, beauty treatments and hairdressing delivered in clients’ homes.

The union had called on female gig workers to paralyse the online app businesses during the holiday season and make the businesses realise the apps “are nothing without their hard work”.

The GIPSWU union, which was established in 2023, hopes the strike will increase public awareness of the alleged poor treatment and poor employment rights of gig workers – particularly women – and increase pressure on the companies and central and state governments to act to improve wages, rights and conditions for people in India’s fast-expanding gig economy.  

‘Denied basic rights’

In a statement issued on 26 October, the GIPSWU said gig workers in India continue to be denied basic worker rights, such as minimum salaries, social security benefits, health and safety protections and redressal procedures. According to recent research, gig workers also frequently experience assault, discrimination and harassment while carrying out their jobs.

Gig worker unions and employment rights campaigners say many gig workers are forced to work for extended periods to meet unrealistic targets, receive poor wages and have steep commissions extracted from their earnings by the aggregators. They add that because female gig workers are required to enter private homes to deliver services such as cleaning or hairdressing, they are placed at high risk of sexual harassment, assault and violence from men.

Gig workers themselves say they face enormous pressure to meet unrealistic deadlines set by the platforms, often receive inadequate wages and aggregators provide inadequate mechanisms for them to air their grievances and appeal against sanctions imposed arbitrarily for alleged breaches of the various platforms’ rules.

For instance, a female gig worker who obtains work delivering beauty and salon treatments in clients’ homes via a well-known app platform told The Print news website says that if she receives poor ratings from clients or cancels booked appointments, she is blocked from gaining work via the app. She also alleged that often the commission she pays to the app is higher than the money she earns, and the aggregator has failed to listen to complaints about the lack of a redressal mechanism if poor personal ratings from clients result in her access to the app for work being blocked. Another female gig worker claimed that often she doesn’t even receive the minimum wage for the work she undertakes.   

Gig worker unions and employment rights campaigners argue that the lack of labour laws applicable to app-based platforms means that unfair practices by the businesses go unchecked, resulting in a modern form of exploitation.

In a statement GIPSWU said: “This strike is an attempt to unite various gig workers across the country to demand the recognition of their rights which were denied both by exploitative companies as well as the Indian government.

“Recent reports highlight the alarming reality of gig workers facing harassment, discrimination and even violence while performing their duties. In light of these challenges, GIPSWU’s Digital Strike seeks to unite gig workers and allies in demanding recognition of their rights.”

Basic worker entitlements

As part of its demands, GIPSWU is calling for gig workers to be recognised as employees of platform companies and to receive basic worker entitlements, such as statutory minimum wages, access to social security benefits and benefits and protections specific to female workers, such as maternity leave and menstrual leave. The union is also demanding the establishment of adequate grievance redressal mechanisms for app-based gig workers and formal acknowledgment of gig workers’ rights to association and collective bargaining.

However, the GIPSWU is also demanding that the central and state governments step up efforts to regulate employment rights and conditions in the gig economy, arguing that the absence of specific labour laws covering app-based platforms means exploitative and unfair practices are going unchecked, allowing aggregators to set rules to suit their own interests, rather than granting basic rights to workers.

In particular, it wants the central and state governments to extend social security rights to gig workers, including access to employees’ provident funds, pension schemes, insurance cover in the event of illness of injury preventing a gig worker from gaining employment, and rights to maternity leave under the Maternity Benefits Act.

Currently, only the states of Karnataka and Rajasthan have introduced parliamentary bills aimed at granting some social security rights and benefits to gig workers, although pressure is growing for other states to follow suit. The Karnataka and Rajasthan governments intend to impose a tax on each customer transaction on digital platforms like Ola, Swiggy, Zomato and Urban Company to fund the new welfare schemes for gig workers, expected to be between 1–2 per cent.

New Social Security Code ‘will grant benefits’

The central government says the new Social Security Code 2020 will recognise gig and platform workers as a new occupational category, where there is no traditional employer-employee relationship, and will grant them certain social security benefits. The government says that, once enacted, the Code will grant certain benefits, “including life and disability cover, accident insurance, health and maternity, old age protection, creche and other benefits”.

According to the central government, the fund will be part-funded by a levy on the relevant app platforms of between one and two per cent of their turnover, up to a limit of five per cent of the amount paid or payable by an aggregator to such workers.

However, although the Social Security Code was passed by Parliament in 2020, it has yet to come into force as a number of states have yet to frame and introduce the necessary legislation. The Social Security Code is one of four labour codes passed by Parliament during 2019–2020 (including the Occupational Safety and Health Code), in a bid to consolidate a complex set of 29 labour laws, boost jobs and improve “the ease of doing business”, says the Union Government.     

Sexual harassment at work

However, another major area of concern for female gig workers is the very real threat of sexual harassment, assault and violence from male customers, members of the public and occupants of private homes where they deliver gig-based services such as cleaning, beauty treatments and hairdressing.   

Under the Prevention of Sexual Harassment (PoSH) Act, all Indian businesses are required to take steps to protect female workers from sexual harassment at work and the law provides a mechanism for dealing with complaints of sexual harassment made by female staff.

Under PoSH, if an organisation employees 10 or more people the employer must establish an Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) to investigate complaints of sexual harassment from female workers. Also, every district in India must establish a Local Complaints Committee (LCC) to handle complaints from female workers in businesses with less than 10 employees where an ICC has not been set up.

Both internal and local complaints committees have the power to make recommendations to the employer for redressal of the women’s complaint, such as disciplinary action for the perpetrator in line with company policies, deduction of salary for payment of compensation to the female victim, termination of the perpetrator’s employment, an order to carry out community service and reporting the incident to the police for possible criminal prosecution.

However, although the PoSH Act makes clear the definition of a fixed ‘workplace’, such as factory or office, it is unclear in legal terms whether the definition applies to the ‘digital workspace’ of platform workers, who lack a fixed workplace or a formal employer.

Unsuccessful court challenge

This issue around the grey area of the scope of PoSH in relation to people working for app platforms recently hit the headlines after cab aggregator platform, Ola, unsuccessfully tried to argue before Karnataka High Court that its drivers were not subject to the requirements of the PoSH Act since they are independent contractors and not employees of the company.

The case centred around an alleged instance of sexual harassment by a taxi driver working for the Ola cabs platform against a female passenger in 2018. The woman alleged that the driver had engaged in inappropriate behaviour during her cab ride, including watching pornographic content in front of her. The victim argued that Ola had not taken sufficient action to protect the safety of its customers and took civil action against ANI Technologies, which runs Ola.

Ola argued that it was not culpable for the alleged sexual harassment in the first place as the driver was an ‘imposter’ – someone driving on someone else’s account. Secondly, it argued that any other driver working for the platform is simply a ‘driver-partner’ or ‘driver-subscriber’, meaning they are not an employee, and the company therefore has no obligation to ensure that any alleged cases of sexual harassment by drivers towards passengers are subject to investigation and sanction by the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) that each business must establish under PoSH to investigate and deal with complaints of sexual harassment carried out by its employees.

However, Karnataka High Court rejected this argument, instead ruling that ANI Technologies was responsible for investigating and if necessary punishing the alleged sexual misconduct by the cab driver to the customer by stating that, for the purposes of the PoSH Act, he was an employee of the company. The court ruled the ICC of ANI Technologies was therefore responsible for taking action over the alleged incident, including investigating the complaint and, if necessary, punishing the driver if found culpable.

Judgment ‘gives optimism’

Writing for the Indian Express, Areesha Khan, a research associate at the Institute of Social Studies Trust, said the judgment “gives optimism to unions and activists” that other test cases could be successfully brought before the courts to prove that platform-based gig workers are employees under other labour laws and therefore entitled to other employment rights.

She wrote: “While the judgment clarifies that it is only for the purposes of the POSH Act, the driver is considered an employee of Ola. This sets precedent and gives hope to the platform-gig workers for the tests of employment for other labour laws. The fact that platform companies are held accountable for the safety of passengers gives a sense of security to the female users of these platforms and aids their mobility.”

She added that the ruling could mean that the protections under PoSH could be extended to cover female platform workers, such as cab drivers and those delivering services in the home, if a female worker suffers sexual harassment from a client, and a successful test case is taken before the civil courts.

Currently, platform workers are not covered by the protections of the ICC under PoSH, meaning they cannot make complaints about sexual harassment from customers to the app platform’s ICC. Also, as they are not classed as employees of a business, they cannot complain to the Local Complaints Committee that each state must establish to handle complaints from female workers in businesses with less than 10 employees.

Writing for the Indian Express, Areesha Khan argued that the ruling in the OLA cases could result in the protections under PoSH being extended to females working for app-based platforms, if a further test case is successfully pursued in the courts. “These intended broader categorisations of POSH, upon reading and reflection, ascertain that platform-gig workers are the employees, platforms are the employers, and the respective workplaces are workplaces under this law,” she wrote.

“So, the mechanism should ensure that the ICC of the platform company takes up responsibility if the aggrieved woman is the platform-gig worker and the harasser is the customer.”

Susceptible to harassment

Commentators say that, in general, all gig workers are highly susceptible to harassment and exploitation by clients, because the ‘ratings’-based system of performance is tilted in favour of customers.

Since customers have the power to deliver low ratings for a gig worker’s services, this skews power in their favour when dealing with the gig worker, since low ratings can affect the individual’s ability to gain further work, and lead to them being blocked from accessing the app by the company that runs it. In turn, say commentators, this makes gig workers are less likely to complain about harassment and abuse from customers, fearing the negative impact on their livelihood if they do not secure good ratings from customers.  

Campaigners add that the absence of effective grievance redressal mechanisms, such as the PoSH investigative committees that formal, recognised employees have access to, also make gig workers particularly vulnerable to instances of sexual harassment and abuse.

Although some smaller platforms, such as Sakha Cabs, have been more proactive in addressing the safety concerns of female workers by creating structures to provide immediate support in the event of sexual harassment, commentators say some of the bigger app platforms still do little more than simply encouraging workers to ‘leave their stuff and run’ in the event of sexual abuse or harassment.

India’s gig workforce predicted to triple by 2030

India’s gig economy is currently estimated to employ 7.7 million people (according to 2020–21 figures), though the number is predicted to nearly triple to 23.5 million by 2029–30, according to a 2022 report from the government’s official think tank, NITI Aayoga, India’s Booming Gig and Platform Economy. In fact, India is one of the top countries in the world for gig workers, with nearly 40 per cent of the world’s freelancers based in the country, according to other research.

India’s gig economy is valued at approximately $20 billion and its value is expected to grow by 17 per cent annually until 2027. A BCG report estimates that the gig economy in India could support up to 90 million non-agricultural jobs, result in work volume transactions worth $250 billion, and add an extra 1.25 per cent to the country’s GDP over time.

Taskmo, a task fulfilment platform that hires gig workers for various companies, found that women’s participation in the gig economy is only about 28 per cent. Even in urban India, where platform-based gig companies primarily operate, the average female employment rate in 2021 was about 6.9 per cent lower than in 2020. Commentators say this decline shows that the gig model has failed in one of its promises to provide more opportunities for females to enter and thrive in the labour force.

Professor Vinoj Abraham, from the Centre for Development Studies, says that there are social norms around where women can and cannot be seen in public places, making it tough for women to enter the traditionally male-dominated driving and delivery jobs that make up a large proportion of the gig economy. “Although technology has simplified job searching, the ‘norms’ still remain the same,” he said.

Dr Gayatri Nair, assistant professor of sociology at the Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi, said that although social norms and domestic responsibilities heavily influence women’s ability to engage in the gig economy, these challenges are compounded by the gig economy’s reliance on workers to provide their own vehicles or tools for their work. “This is a significant barrier for women due to their lower access to credit and resources to begin with,” says Dr Nair.

In a report published by the Fairwork project, cultural anthropologist Anjali Krishan and her co-author Kavita Dattani focused on location-based digital platform work – including ride hailing, food delivery and at-home beauty treatments – and the ways in which the gig economy can aggravate gender inequalities.

Over 5,000 workers were interviewed by a global team of researchers using a three-part data gathering technique that spanned four years, 180 platforms and 38 countries. The researchers found an economy where it is “commonplace” to fail to address gender-based discrimination and provide safe working conditions.

“With so many reports of violence and abuse, the thing that really came to the fore was the incidence of sexual harassment. It was shocking,” said the Fairwork report.

The report further states that platform work in ride-hailing and food delivery is dominated by men while women are much more visible in the “feminised” sectors of beauty, care and domestic work. A report by the International Labour Organisation, based on a survey of platform workers in 2019 and 2020, found that in 12 countries only nine per cent of delivery riders and five per cent of ride-hailing drivers are women.

The report found that as a result of the ‘masculinisation’ of driving and delivery roles, women are more likely to perform domestic work within a client’s home – removing them from the relative safety of public spaces. “Every time they enter a client’s home they’re wondering: ‘Is this person going to be good or bad?,’” said Anjali Krishan.

Krishan cites the example of a worker in India performing a beauty treatment at a client’s home, only to then be asked to stay and cook – a scenario she describes as very common.

“When workers are asked to do extra work that aren’t included in the official service, they can’t say no as clients have a lot more voice on the platform, and it means workers get drawn into extra or possibly unpaid work,” adds Dattani.

Growth of digital-powered protests

Meanwhile, commentators say the success of the female gig workers’ strike could lead to further strikes and protests being organised via digital means, such as through social media, which is a new and potentially powerful way for marginalised groups of workers globally to organise, protest and strike against poor and unsafe working and employment conditions.

The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, which campaigns globally to advance human rights in business and eradicate abuse, said: “The digital strike represents a pivotal moment for India’s labour movement, where traditional union tactics meet modern technology-enabled protest methods.”

Meanwhile, writing for the Thred news website, which focuses on social change issues facing young people globally, Sahil Pradhan said: “As the gig economy grows, the success of this strike could set an important precedent for worker protections and rights in the digital age, potentially influencing similar movements globally.

“The protest has already garnered attention from labour rights organisations worldwide, highlighting the universal nature of these challenges in the digital economy era.”

In fact, the success of the strike appears to have encouraged the GIPSWU to arrange further industrial action via digital means among its female gig worker members in India.

Selvi M, vice president of GIPSWU, told The New Indian Express: “They [the online platforms] also know we are vulnerable, need these jobs to run our families and don’t have the clout to make a fuss even if our dignity is ripped apart. We are striking today, but we intend to organise more strikes regularly.

“The onus is on the government to get platform companies to treat us right.”