India’s labor ministry is pushing the country’s burgeoning fast-casual trade sector to prioritize the well-being and safety of gig workers.
The country’s labor and employment minister, Mansukh Mandaviya, met with executives from Zomato’s Blinkit, Swiggy’s Instamart and Zepto to ask them to drop their marketing language, which promises deliveries within 10 minutes, and discuss ways to improve safety and working conditions for delivery staff, Bloomberg was mentionedciting anonymous sources.
While the instant delivery model has faltered elsewhere, in India it has taken off at an unprecedented rate in recent years, as consumers in urban cities expect PlayStation 5s to be delivered to grocery stores within 10 to 15 minutes.
Companies like Zepto, Blinkit and Instamart have raised and poured hundreds of millions of dollars into creating “dark stores” – discrete warehouses strategically located around neighborhoods that serve as hubs. These companies have also hired armies of delivery staff as competition heats up in the country’s booming e-commerce space.
Pressure on workers has intensified as the industry has grown. On New Year’s Eve, more than 200,000 gig workers staged protests in major Indian cities during the peak delivery season. according to the South China Morning Postciting App-Based Transport Workers Federation of India. The workers demanded legislative protections, social security benefits, better wages and changes to automated penalty systems that lower their ratings for late deliveries. Safety concerns have arisen around workers rushing through traffic to meet delivery deadlines. “Extremely fast 10-15 minute delivery models are fundamentally changing the risk and stress profile of the gig,” Prabir Jha, founder and CEO of HR consultancy Prabir Jha People Advisory, told the agency.
Amid worker protests and pressure from the Labor Department, Blinkit removed messages promising deliveries within 10 minutes, and its rivals are also expected to follow suit, Bloomberg reported.
The news comes just over a month after India granted legal status to millions of gig and platform workers under new labor laws that define gig and platform workers in the law and require aggregators such as food delivery and ride-hailing platforms to contribute 1% to 2% of their annual revenue (capped at 5% of payments made to such workers social security).
India’s gig economy employed about 7.7 million workers in 2020-21 and is projected to reach 23.5 million by 2029-30, according to government think tank NITI Aayog.
Swiggy, Blinkit and Zepto did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
