The National Human Rights Commission has taken suo motu cognisance of the working conditions offered at warehouses of Amazon, a delivery giant, where workers, it was revealed recently, are forced to work without water or bathroom breaks in extreme heat. Amazon, it appears, is a repeat offender: in the United States of America, it has been investigated for high injury rates among workers; in Europe, Amazon has been fined and probed for poor working conditions; in over 15 countries, including India, it has been facing an annual ‘Make Amazon Pay’ protest by workers demanding better wages and working conditions. These transgressions — conditions offered by other companies to this rank of workers, reports show, are no better — highlight a pattern of commercial behemoths prioritising profits over workers’ welfare. Amazon inflating its bottom line at the expense of its personnel is echoed in India’s gig economy that runs on the back of underpaid and exploited workers whose livelihood depends on meeting unrealistic and dangerous targets.

It is not as if there is no legal safety net for this constituency of workers. The Contract Labour (Re­gulation and Abolition) Act mandates employ­ers to look after the health and the welfare of contractual labourers and the proposed Code on Social Security, 2020 also recognises the rights of contractual workers to receive social security benefits like pension. The reality, though, is sobering. The recent Fairwork India Ratings show that only three Indian companies have a minimum wage policy for their non-permanent workers. Significantly, not a single company employing contractual employees has made an effort to recognise workers’ collectives that can bargain for the rights of labourers; in fact, companies like Amazon have actively tried to break up such bodies. India’s high rate of unemployment makes labour cheap and weakens the bargaining power of non-permanent employees. But exploitative companies and lax State supervision are not the only hurdles to ensuring a healthy working environment. The consumer — the king for any company — remains indifferent to workers’ plight. Perhaps there is a case for heightening the awareness of customers towards violations of labour rights by commercial enterprises to bring real change in the way workers in the lower ranks of the labour chain are treated by their employers.