India’s First Gig Workers’ Rights Bill Stipulate
The Rajasthan government has passed the Rajasthan Platform Based Gig Workers (Registration and Welfare) Bill, 2023.
It is the first legislation of its kind in India outlining welfare schemes for the State’s approximately three lakh gig workers.
What are the key provisions of Rajasthan Platform Based Gig Workers (Registration and Welfare) Bill, 2023?
Gig Worker: The bill defines a gig worker as a person who performs work or participates in a work arrangement and earns from such activities outside of the traditional employer-employee relationship and who works on contract that results in a given rate of payment, based on terms and conditions laid down in such contract and includes all piece-rate work.
Applies to: The Bill applies to “aggregators” (digital intermediaries connecting buyers and sellers) and “primary employers” (individual or organizations engaging platform-based workers).
Welfare Board: The Bill proposes a Welfare Board. The Minister in charge of the Labour Department will be the chairperson of the board and at least one-third of its nominated members will be women. It will also have two members each from gig workers and aggregators to be nominated by the state government.
The board will ensure registration of gig workers and aggregators operating in the state and establish a social security and welfare fund for gig workers.
Fund: The Welfare Board will create a “Social Security and Welfare Fund” comprising contributions made by individual workers, State government aids, other sources and a ‘welfare cess’ a cut from each transaction which the aggregator is required to pay.
The rate of the welfare cess will not exceed 2% nor fall short of 1% of the value of each transaction and aggregators are required to submit the amount within the first five days of a month.
Access to schemes and grievance redressal: The Bill provides gig workers access to general and specific social security schemes and opportunity to be heard for any grievances and appropriate grievance redressal mechanism.
Aggregators duties: The aggregator’s duties under the Bill include: depositing welfare cess on time, updating the database of gig workers and documenting any variations in numbers within one month of such changes.
If they fail to comply, they will be fined up to ₹5 lakh for the first offence and ₹50 lakh for further violations; primary employers will pay up to ₹10,000 for the first offence and ₹2 lakh for subsequent violations.
Gig Economy
A gig economy is a free market system in which temporary positions are common and organisations contract with independent workers for short-term engagements.
According to a report by Boston Consulting Group, India’s gig workforce comprises 15 million workers employed across industries such as software, shared services and professional services.
According to a 2019 report by the India Staffing Federation, India is the fifth largest in flexi-staffing globally, after the US, China, Brazil and Japan.
Potential of India's Gig Sector
An estimated 56% of new employment in India is being generated by the gig economy companies across both the blue-collar and white-collar workforce.
While the gig economy is prevalent among blue-collar jobs in India, the demand for gig workers in white-collar jobs such as project-specific consultants, salespeople, web designers, content writers and software developers is also emerging.
The gig economy can serve up to 90 million jobs in the non-farm sectors in India with a potential to add 1.25% to the GDP over the "long term".
As India moves towards its stated goal of becoming a USD 5 trillion economy by 2025, the gig economy will be a major building block in bridging the income and unemployment gap.
Different Collar Jobs
Blue-Collar Worker: It is a member of the working class, who performs manual labour and earns an hourly wage.
White-Collar Worker: It is a salaried professional, typically referring to general office workers and management.
Gold-Collar Worker: It is used to refer to highly-skilled knowledge people who are highly valuable to the company. Example: Lawyers, doctors, research scientists, etc.
Green-Collar Worker: It is a worker who is employed in the environmental sectors of the economy.
Example: People working in alternative energy sources like solar panels, Greenpeace, World Wide Fund for nature, etc.
Pink-Collar Worker: It is employed in a job that is traditionally considered to be women’s work and is often low-paid.
Red-Collar Worker: Government workers of all types.
Open-Collar Worker: It is a worker who works from home, especially via the internet
Scarlet-Collar Worker: It is a term often used to refer to people who work in the pornography industry, especially women entrepreneurs in the field of internet pornography.
Challenges in Gig Sector
Unregulated Nature: The gig economy thrives largely unregulated, therefore workers have little job security and few benefits.
However, few argue that the gig economy in India with respect to workers not getting any social security, insurance, etc. is an extension of India’s informal labour, which has been prevalent for a long time and has remained unregulated.
Need for Skills: A worker needs to be skilled enough. Unless a person is extremely talented, his bargaining power will necessarily be limited.
While companies routinely invest in training employees, a gig-economy worker will have to upgrade his skills on his own at his own cost
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