Gig Workers' Strike: After December 25, Delivery Partners Are Going Offline Again. Here Are Their Key Demands

New Delhi: Last-minute online deliveries on New Year's Eve may face some disruptions across major cities in the county as gig and delivery workers are set to go on another strike this December 31.  The protest is expected to hit quick commerce app services and online food deliveries, as the last day of the year is usually one of the busiest days for online orders. 

Delivery partners from Zomato, Swiggy, Blinkit, Zepto, Amazon and Flipkart are expected to go offline on Wednesday. The strike has been called by the Telangana Gig and Platform Workers Union and the Indian Federation of App-Based Transport Workers (IFAT). Regional worker groups from Maharashtra, Karnataka, Delhi-NCR, West Bengal and parts of Tamil Nadu have also showed their support to this strike. The protest may hurt retailers as well as online platforms which focus on increased sales to meet their year-end sales targets. 

The exact number of delivery personnel in the country is unknown. According to a 2022 NITI Aayog research, there were approximately 77 lakh gig workers in India in 2020–2021, including those working in app-based taxi services, fast commerce, and food delivery. This figure was projected to reach between 80 lakh and 1.8 crore by 2024.

What Are Their Key Problems

The poor working conditions of these delivery workers whom we often encounter on a day-to-day basis are no secret. These are some of their demands, that they have finally spelt out:

• According to the unions, delivery partners are often forced to work long hours, even when their earnings, during this prolonged period, are less.
• Delivery executives are also forced to meet daily targets which often leads to concerns about their road safety. 
• These workers also have almost not job security, and almost no basic social protection.
• Workers have also complained of unfair and arbitrary blocking of their IDs.

What Are Their Demands From Govt 

In a letter to the Union Labour Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, IFAT asked the government to regulate the platform companies under their labour laws. They have also asked the government to intervene urgently to ban unsafe delivery models, including fast-delivery timelines.

IFAT has also asked the government to ensure an end arbitrary ID blocking, fair wage systems, social security benefits such as health insurance, accident insurance and pensions, and the protection of workers’ right to organise collectively against unjust practices.

The federation has also asked for talks involving the government, the platform companies and the worker unions.

Why Did The December 25 Strike Not Yield Result

The IFAT which reportedly represents around 4,00,000 app-based transport and delivery workers across the country, wrote to Union Labour Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, saying that though it had held a nationwide flash strike on December 25, a day when deliveries are usually at their peak, it did not lead to any significant result.

The strike led to a 50–60% disruption in delivery services in major cities like Pune, Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad and Kolkata. Though the protest was meant to force online platforms to acknowledge some of the most gruesome problems faced by these delivery agents, like unsafe delivery targets, their falling incomes, rampant ID blockings and absence of social security, nothing much happened.

The IFAT claimed that the delivery giants did not even bother to engage with their workers after the December 25 protest. Some of them even went to the extent of issuing threats, deactivating some accounts and imposed penalties based on algorithms. The federation also claimed that these delivery giant have even engaged with third-party agencies to weaken their strike.

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