A 2022 McKinsey study found that roughly 58 million people in the United States of America identified themselves as ‘independent’ workers. In India, the Niti Aayog pegged the number of ‘gig workers’ — the brethren of independent workers — at 77 lakh; the figure is projected to rise to 2.35 crore by 2029-30. However, the rise of what is now known as the gig economy has not witnessed a corresponding spike in the standards of protection and amenities offered to workers in this sector. In the West, they are hardly protected by laws: the United Kingdom is a rare exception, with its apex court upholding a 2016 order barring Uber from classifying its drivers as self-employed. In India, gig workers seemingly have a more robust legal safety net. The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act mandates the employer to look after the health and welfare of contractual labourers. The proposed Code on Social Security, 2020 also recognises the rights of gig workers to social security benefits like pension. Yet the reality is much more sobering. The most recent edition of the Fairwork India Ratings, which assesses the working conditions of gig workers on different platforms, found that only three Indian companies — Bigbasket, Flipkart and Urban Company — have instituted a minimum wage policy for their non-permanent workers. More significantly, not a single company was able to show that it had made an effort to recognise a trade union of its workers. All this leads to a pertinent question: why are the interests of gig workers slipping through the cracks despite the rise in the gig economy? The weakening of protections for gig workers may impair the growth of this sector. That is undesirable. The gig ecosystem not only has economic potential but it also has attendant benefits: it had, for instance, propped up a large section of urban India during the pandemic, with food and medicines delivered to the doorsteps of lakhs of consumers.
There is thus an undeniable need to examine the welfare benefits received by gig workers. Are the stipulations of the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act being honoured by Indian firms? Perhaps there is a case for both industry and the State to learn from Rajasthan that has proposed to register gig workers on a common platform and assign each worker a unique identification so that they can access social security schemes. Improvements in the lives of workers would automatically lead to the betterment of the gig economy as a whole.