For gig workers
Karnataka introduced a new Bill, called the draft Karnataka Platform-based Gig Workers (Social Security and Welfare) Bill, 2024, seeking to provide social security and welfare measures for platform-based gig workers in the State.
In the recent past, a similar law was also enacted by Rajasthan called the Rajasthan Platform Based Gig Workers (Registration and Welfare) Act, 2023.
The Karnataka Bill has a distinct similarity with the Rajasthan legislation in the sense that both are based on a welfare board model
In its working policy paper on the gig economy, NITI Aayog has made projections of the gig workforce expanding to 23.5 million workers by 2030.
Given the overall depressed employment generation scenario, gig work is one sector that is providing a livelihood to an increasingly large number of job-seekers
Issues
India has seen protests and agitations by gig workers on the issue of revenue sharing, working hours and various other working conditions and terms of employment.
It is difficult to solve these issues within the existing legal framework as employment relations in the gig economy are non-existent at worst or complicated at best.
The legal framework in labour laws is inherently based on employer-employee relation.
However, in the gig economy, employment relations are subject to demystification as well as complication.
Those who run the platform prefer to call themselves as aggregators and consider gig workers as independent contractors/workers.
Aggregators believe that they are providing the technology and bringing together independent workers and consumers
On the other hand, workers in the gig economy consider aggregators as their employers as the conditions of service and terms of employment are set by the aggregators
In India, gig and platform workers are included in Code on Social Security 2020 as a kind of informal self-employed workers but no mention in the other three new labour codes, namely Code on Wages, Industrial Relations Code and Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code
It has preferred the term ‘aggregator’ for app companies rather than employer.
Without the recognition of employment relations, protective labour laws that ensure a minimum wage, occupational safety and health, working hours and leave entitlements, and the right to collective bargaining cannot be applied
There is no guarantee on minimum earnings from gig work even when a worker is available for the greater part of the day.
There is no regulation on working hours also
The welfare board model adopted by Rajasthan and Karnataka provides some welfare schemes for gig workers, but it does not replace institutional social security benefits such as provident fund, gratuity, or maternity benefits, which regular workers are legally entitled to
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