Modern Slavery…?
‘Today as always, men fall into two groups: slaves and free men. Whoever does not have two-thirds of his day for himself, is a slave, whatever he may be: a statesman, a businessman, an official, or a scholar’
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Slavery may be described as the wrongful incarceration, demoralization, and contravention of others’ human rights. Modern slavery includes coerced labor, human trafficking, bonded labor, coerced child labor, working in deplorable conditions, working overtime without extra salary and other forms of employee exploitation. This article brings to fore the case of employees with cab and food aggregators as apt examples of modern slavery.
Working conditions of drivers employed with cab aggregator companies are abysmal. They are termed as ‘driver-partners’. By doing this, the companies eschew their responsibilities and obligations towards them like providing sick pay, insurances etc.as technically they become independent contractors and not perpetual employees. The drivers are paid per task rather than a regular salary. Furthermore, there is a lack of transparency in these app-based firms’ systems. The drivers have no idea as to how these app’s programmers figure up rates, incentives, fines and bonuses among several other things. There is very little information accessible about how rides are allocated or fine-tuned for them. Moreover, these businesses have an impotent grievance resolution mechanism especially when drivers deal with irate clients which gives the former, a feeling of being reduced to a cog of some robotic machinery; one, which is obsessed with maximising value for its shareholders while shunning the humans’ driving the business . Long working hours and a pittance for an income, with all the debts and expenses to pay, contribute to the drivers’ psychological stress, edginess and overall physical health.
Similarly, the pay incentives for food delivery personnel is quite robust despite pathetic working conditions but the genuine salary they receive is relatively low. The reason for this is that delivery people do not get a chance to make as many deliveries as are required to earn a high pay and the majority of this pay goes towards fuel expenditures, leaving only an iota for other expenses . Many of these people are migrants or poor people who often work full-time to make ends meet and support their families, especially in countries like India where they go out to distribute food and goods even during pandemic induced harsh lockdowns. Despite the fact that these workers compromise their health to deliver food and groceries, their companies do nothing to help them. People who work for food aggregators are also required to work on a very tight schedule and make deliveries on time. For even a minor time delay, they are fired or their pay is cut and because of this, these personnel routinely infringe traffic laws and drive temerariously, compromising their own and others’ lives.
It’s past time to safeguard those who work in the gig economy. Governments must enact regulations and legislation to venerate the rights of these food delivery personnel and cab drivers to proscribe their abuse by app-based companies. Furthermore, such companies can be injuctively authorized to amend their contract terms to acknowledge that their workforce are ‘shareholders’; not merely ‘partners’ and provide them with all legal privileges of their employment which they rightfully deserve