Gig Workers and Platform Workers

In one line

For the first time an Indian statute defines the person who works through an app, and makes the app pay a share of its turnover towards his social security.

In exam wording: sections 112 to 114 of the Code on Social Security 2020 provide for helplines and facilitation centres for unorganised, gig and platform workers, for their registration on self-declaration, and for social security schemes for gig and platform workers funded in part by contributions from aggregators at a rate between one and two per cent of annual turnover, capped at five per cent of the amount paid to those workers.

Why the law has this at all

Because a whole class of work grew up in the gap between the two categories Indian labour law recognised.

The driver who takes rides through an app is not an employee. He is not employed on wages by an establishment; he owns his vehicle, chooses his hours and is paid per ride. So Chapters III to VII do not touch him. But he is not really a self-employed businessman either. He does not set his price, does not choose his customer, and the terms are set entirely by the platform.

Under the old law he fell between two stools and got nothing. The Code's answer is not to force him into the employee category, which would have been litigated for a decade, but to create a third category and attach a benefit to it.

And the funding idea is the clever part. There is no employer to take a contribution from, so the Code takes it from the aggregator, and it takes it not on wages but on turnover. That is what makes the scheme collectable from a business which insists it employs nobody.

Some words this chapter uses

Gig worker, section 2(35), is a person who performs work or participates in a work arrangement and earns from such activities outside of traditional employer-employee relationship. Platform work, section 2(60), is such an arrangement in which organisations or individuals use an online platform to access others to solve specific problems or provide specific services for payment. Platform worker, section 2(61), is a person engaged in platform work. Aggregator, section 2(2), is a digital intermediary or a marketplace for a buyer or user of a service to connect with the seller or service provider. Self-declaration is a statement by the worker himself, without an employer's certificate. Turnover is total business revenue.

The relationship between the three is a standing short question. Every platform worker is a gig worker; not every gig worker is a platform worker. Gig work is defined by being outside the traditional employment relationship. Platform work is the subset mediated by an online platform. A freelance plumber found by word of mouth is a gig worker only; the same plumber taking jobs through an app is also a platform worker, and the app is the aggregator.