Bengaluru, India — After years of working at a salon in Bengaluru, Shakeela Banu made a significant life change in 2018 and joined Urban Company (UC), an app-based house providers platform that has greater than 52,000 staff throughout Indian cities, one-third of whom are girls.
At first, Banu was proud of the working situations. Her supervisor handled her nicely, she mentioned, and he or she bought loads of work as a beautician on name. She estimates that she’s labored with 3,000 prospects since she joined the corporate and has turned down many requests from those that would ask for her providers privately. It was her means of staying loyal to her employers.
However, issues have soured since then.
Last yr, the platform rolled out new guidelines together with that staff preserve scores of 4.7 or larger out of 5 and settle for 70 % of the job leads, with solely 4 cancellations allowed in a month to keep away from getting blocked.
Banu was considered one of many UC staff whose profile was blocked attributable to “low” scores.
On its weblog, the corporate mentioned that these measures are supposed to increase the working requirements for staff and enhance buyer expertise. (There are additionally plans afoot for stricter guidelines below which staff might want to settle for no less than 80 % of the roles and solely three cancellations will likely be allowed.)
If staff miss these standards, they obtain a warning and have to attend both on-line or offline classes to retrain in providers the place they’ve acquired poor scores. If their metrics don’t enhance after that, their profiles are blocked. Retraining on-line is free, however the staff should pay a payment, ranging between 6,000 rupees and 15,000 rupees (between about $72 and $180), if they’ve to coach on the UC workplace.
Urban Company depends on a pay-to-work mannequin which asserts that staff are “independent partners” who’re being supplied with a buyer base {and professional} coaching they’d not in any other case have.
The staff incur a number of prices earlier than they qualify for jobs with UC, together with coaching charges, onboarding charges, product charges, and a month-to-month subscription payment to get a assured quota of jobs, averaging about 50,000 rupees (about $600). Additionally, for each job, UC additionally takes a fee payment of as much as 25 % in service costs and taxes. Workers aren’t compensated for journey prices or car rents.
Urban Company didn’t reply to Al Jazeera’s request for feedback.
Bad critiques, blockings
When UC launched in 2014, staff had been interested in the versatile schedule it provided. In Ghaziabad, Maya Pal, who used to run her personal salon, joined UC to get some additional work in 2018.
“Before, we used to get 60 to 70 jobs every month. Now we get job leads once every two days if we are lucky,” mentioned Pal, who has been working with UC for 4 years. “Then they ask us to maintain our acceptance rates. If you don’t give us jobs, how do we maintain the rate?”
Even after being out there on the app for 12 hours, the leads aren’t sufficient, staff say.
“On the app, we have to keep our location turned on. If we move away from our marked location, they stop sending job leads,” mentioned Pal, including the system requires her to be housebound all day.
During the lockdown, Pal needed to shut her salon. Then she met with a few accidents and needed to cancel UC jobs. Her ID was blocked for 4 months. With no different earnings to help her household, Pal, a single mom of two, pulled her children out of college.
She says that solely when UC staff constantly obtain five-star critiques on 10 jobs do their scores enhance. It takes one dangerous assessment to make it fall once more.
UC partnered with the Ministry of Finance’s National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) to supply coaching and digital certification to expert professionals to assist them develop into micro-entrepreneurs. At the identical time, staff have been warned towards sharing their cellphone numbers with their shoppers and all orders should be by way of the UC app. Violations can result in termination or blocking.
“There are seasonal blockings, too,” mentioned Spandan Pratyush, secretary for the All India Gig Workers’ Union (AIGWU)-NCR, a commerce union of all app-based staff in India. “You wouldn’t have seen a lot of blocking … when there was a huge demand around the period of [the Hindu festival] Diwali.” But since then, the blockings elevated, staff mentioned.
The staff assume that the continuing mass blockings since May 2023 are a step to extract cash from new inductees whereas pruning older staff.
“The new workers won’t question the new policies, new rates and whatever conditions have been applied. But older workers who have been working for years under certain conditions, they would obviously object to changes way more,” Pratyush mentioned.
All will not be going nicely for the brand new trainees, both. In Gurugram on the outskirts of capital New Delhi, Deepali Khare interviewed with UC and joined as a trainee beautician in late August.
The beautician coaching at UC prices round 45,000 rupees (about $540), which incorporates the coaching payment and cash to purchase merchandise used throughout coaching classes. Khare agreed to pay this quantity in instalments.
The coaching classes, which began about 9:30am, had been supposed to finish by 6pm however would go until 9pm. Trainees additionally needed to deliver fashions to practise salon providers on and pay for his or her meals and transport.
The firm didn’t point out “that we need to get 45 models for 45 days of training”, Khare informed Al Jazeera.
Then, abruptly, in September, Khare acquired a message from her coach that she needn’t attend extra classes. She was baffled. She had been dropped from coaching halfway with none form of efficiency assessment. Upon repeatedly asking why she’d been dropped, the corporate mentioned that there have been high quality points.
“If there are quality issues, why couldn’t they give us more training? During the interview, they had said that they would increase the training days if you are new to the job. There was no mention of failing us,” she says. “If they had, I would not have spent so much money on this. Isn’t this a type of fraud?”
Five others from her group of 10 had been eliminated, too.
“I still have the [product] kit I purchased from them. I must have paid about 14,000 rupees [$168] for it,” she mentioned.
The trainees and staff are required to purchase the merchandise – a mixture of identified and in-house manufacturers, used for providers within the magnificence, repairs and home-cleaning phase – straight from UC. Workers have to scan the barcodes of the merchandise earlier than each job and preserve a utilization price above 70 %. These merchandise, the employees say, are offered to them at inflated costs.
UC has additionally elevated product costs. For occasion, the value of the disposable kits used for the therapeutic massage providers, containing 25 packets of single-use gadgets like bedsheets, pillow covers, towels, candles and napkins, was hiked from 1,440 rupees (about $17) in October to 1,800 rupees (about $22) in November. Massage oils that used to price roughly 54 rupees now price 66 rupees.
“It’s fine that they increase the price of the products. But then, shouldn’t they increase the price of the services, too? Only then will we be able to cover the costs,” mentioned one employee who didn’t wish to be named.
In its annual enterprise abstract for the monetary yr 2023 (FY23), UC reported that its losses earlier than taxation fell from 5.14 billion rupees (about $62m) in FY22 to three.08 billion rupees (about $37m) in FY23. Product gross sales contributed 22.13 % of the FY23 income, the place the gathering elevated from 910 million rupees (about $11m), or 20.77 %, in FY22 to 1.41 billion rupees (about $17m) in FY23.
The remainder of the income comes from service gross sales together with the fee UC costs its staff, which, together with product gross sales and charges, can whole as much as practically 40 %.
Protests
After a spate of ID blockings final yr, UC staff protested in Bengaluru, New Delhi and its suburbs, Kolkata and different cities.
In August, when their calls for weren’t met even after the protests, AIGWU filed a grievance with the state labour division towards unfair labour practices together with the everlasting and arbitrary ID blocking of staff.
AIGWU additionally requested the division to go a invoice to outline and establish the employee-employer relationship between them, which might be certain that the employees are entitled to rights, together with of collective bargaining, below Indian labour legislation. The quantity of management the corporate workout routines on its staff contradicts its declare that they’re unbiased staff, AIGWU mentioned.
“It’s important to ask what nature of work is considered a ‘gig’. A transparent contract will reflect the degree of reliance these companies have on a worker,” Rajesh Joseph, a labour skilled at Azim Premji University in Bengaluru, mentioned. “When you are asking a worker that they should be working a certain way, then the relationship changes beyond gig work.”
In September, UC replied to AIGWU’s August grievance and mentioned that UC staff are unbiased contractors and since there is no such thing as a employer-employee relationship between the employees and UC, Indian labour legal guidelines don’t apply to them.
India’s new Code on Social Security, 2020, extends social safety schemes for gig staff and platform staff, however it has not come into impact but. So far, there are just some piecemeal native efforts.
In 2021, the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court dominated that Uber drivers should be handled as staff – not unbiased contractors – who’re entitled to advantages like minimal wage and paid go away. Experts imagine that this ruling set an necessary precedent for gig staff globally.
According to authorities think-tank NITI Aayog, an estimated 7.7 million staff had been a part of the gig financial system in 2020-21, and that quantity is anticipated to greater than triple to 23.5 million by 2029-30.
It will not be clear the place platform work falls below Indian labour legal guidelines. In most states, in accordance with the Shops and Establishments Act, an “employee” can imply an individual paid on a contract, piece price or fee foundation – and the employer has to supply both one month’s earlier discover or pay to take away or dismiss an worker.
In Gurugram, the labour division has been conducting since August a conciliation course of between UC and the employees with AIGWU.
“At least verbally it has been observed by the labour commissioners in Gurugram and Noida that they are full-time workers,” mentioned Pratyush, who was current on the conferences.
During one such assembly in mid-October, the corporate representatives had agreed to open the blocked staff’ IDs and return the cash to the trainees, comparable to Khare, who had been dropped. But she was by no means reimbursed, she informed Al Jazeera.
“The company representatives didn’t turn up for the next few meetings,” Pratyush informed Al Jazeera. In a gathering on November 21 in Gurugram, the corporate mentioned that they’ve checked out it on “a case-by-case basis, and they cannot open the IDs or return the money. They did not give a reason,” Pratyush mentioned.
In its annual report (PDF), Fairwork India rated digital labour platforms in India on 5 rules: truthful pay, truthful situations, truthful contracts, truthful administration and truthful illustration. Urban Company, which had topped the 2022 scores by scoring seven out of 10, dropped to a rating of 5 out of 10.
In January, the Gurugram labour division moved the case to the commercial tribunal and labour courtroom since no compromise was reached through the conciliation course of. While the labour division can decide who’s an worker and employer, solely courts have the ability to implement this through the claims course of.
“But the recommendations made by the conciliation officer under unfair labour practices, such as constantly changing the terms of employment, forcing them to log in for 12 hours or more, no leave policy, and no maternity benefits, will be helpful,” Pratyush mentioned.
Banu didn’t retrain with Urban Company. But Pal did, and is working with the platform once more. Her current gross month-to-month earnings have fallen from 50,000 rupees to 15,000 rupees (from $603 to $181) within the preliminary months of 2018. After deducting product prices and commissions, she barely makes 6,000 ($72) rupees a month.
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/3/1/how-indias-urban-company-has-soured-gig-work-for-women?traffic_source=rss
