A mixture of emotions filled the overcrowded hall – anger, despair, irritation, insecurity, frustration, fear, anticipation…and hope! Over a hundred and fifty young men and women had gathered to attend the first public meeting of workers from the Urban Company, organised by the CITU affiliated All India Gig Workers Union (CITU) Urban at Pune on 27th of July 2023. The atmosphere reflected both their need to share their experiences and also to try and find a solution to their problems. Over a period of three hours, several of them spoke at length, detailing the different ways in which they are exploited. What emerged is one more story of how capitalism invents new forms of extraction of surplus, cloaking it in a manner whereby those who are being exploited are taken for a ride. But of course, not for long!
Speaker after speaker narrated how the Urban Company (formerly named Urban Clap) hired them as “Partners”, making them believe they were “free” self-employed professionals, when actually they were being slowly entangled into a deceitful web of exploitative working conditions. As one of them put it, “I joined the Urban Company because I wanted family time…But now the company has introduced a compulsory work shift of 12 hours.” Not just that, service calls (what they call “leads”) must be taken any time, which means that the workers are literally on call for 24 hours, right through the night. A lack of response is penalised by lowering their ratings, and a lowered rating can result in being blocked, even permanently, which in effect is being rendered unemployed! Many of those who attended the meeting had been blocked during their tenure with the Company, some temporarily and others for over three years! A single parent who had worked as a beautician narrated how she suffered because her EMI payments could not be paid on time when the company blocked her. And the reason for blocking her was simply that she refused to service a client because she already had an appointment scheduled for later, and would not have been able to manage both. The company refused to entertain her pleas for unblocking; in fact all she would get is a standard message from “Customer Care” saying “We are sorry for the inconvenience caused!” Blocked as far back as in January 2000, she remains blocked to date; the arbitrariness of the decision to block her being compounded by a complete lack of any mechanism to solve her grievance.
Her story is one of hundreds; many of them are women supporting their families, especially because the beauty segment remains a major part of the company’s business. Several were lured by the attractive advertisements issued by the company that offered them the possibility of handsome incomes while being able to manage children and home, often an important factor for women earners. Many dismantled their parlours, and invested their savings in the deposit and training fees (up to Rs 40000-50000) that have to be paid to the Company before they are on boarded on to the App. Today, they stare at mounting debts and broken dreams as they struggle to survive after they have been blocked by the company for trivial reasons. The entire blocking system is a sham; it is as much a misnomer as the word ‘partner’. Being blocked amounts to being thrown out of work. The workers lose both their deposits and dues from the Company, and the process is based on an entirely subjective system based on four or five criteria that have been unilaterally fixed by the Company – Response rate to calls (80%), Delivery of service (85%), Calendar Marking (no more than 50 hours a week off), Rating (not less than 4.75) and Product Scanning (in case of services that use company products like oils, cosmetics, etc). This means that workers are always worried about losing out and kept on their tenterhooks. In one case, a beauty worker had an accident while travelling on her two wheeler to service a client, and had to cancel the job. When she called the company to inform them, she was asked to post a photo of her injured face on the company Whatsapp group. Since she could not respond to other calls for a couple of days, being unable to work due to injuries, she was blocked! Another worker had a harrowing experience to narrate, which reflects the utter callousness and disregard for the safety of these women workers. It is apparently quite common to receive bookings for personal services for women via mobile phones that belong to men. Previously, the workers used to personally verify the customer through a phone call, but now that service has been discontinued; the only contact with a customer is through the Whatsapp Chat. When the beauty worker entered the house and asked for the woman client, she was shocked to know that the customer was actually a man, who was insisting on being served, and in fact “welcomed” her with the words, “Where shall we start?” She immediately left the premises and cancelled the call. Since she had recorded a couple of earlier cancellations because her small child had been sick, she was blocked! She could not hold back her tears when she explained how she went every single day to the Company’s office and pleaded and pleaded to be unblocked. Her economic insecurities had been heightened because she had had an inter-caste marriage and had no parental support. Finally she was unblocked but only after going through severe mental trauma. Another worker from the housecleaning segment narrated how he was blocked when he had had to go to his village to attend the last rites of a close family member and remained away from Pune for some days, despite having informed the company. He even threatened to self-immolate himself and registered a complaint with the local police station, which sent him a notice saying that instead he should approach the Labour Commissioner’s office for grievance redressal! The desperation of the workers is evident in the current situation of huge and growing unemployment and the steep and ever increasing cost of living. But they also responded positively when the hall resonated with the slogan “Hum Partner Nahin, Kamgar Hain” (We are Workers, NOT Partners) given by Rikta Krishnaswamy, leader of the All India Gig Workers Union as she told them how CITU had taken the initiative to organise workers associated with Urban Company all over the country, especially in the metro and urban hubs of Delhi, Gurgaon, NOIDA, Kolkata, Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai, etc and how the CITU maintains that their working conditions warrant them to be termed as workers, with rights as workers. She explained how international capital had been invested in platform companies in India, which initially gave huge attractive incentives to capture the market and wipe out the small and petty service sector. These same self employed persons have now been transformed into workers, who are controlled by technical algorithms developed and operated by large corporates. The task before us is to establish their status as workers, and struggle to improve their working conditions, including wages, working hours, and safety and social security. The public meeting ended with a resolve to build a strong union and struggle around a charter of demands. A fifteen member Pune committee was elected to oversee these efforts. After the meeting, a delegation of workers along with CITU District Secretary Comrade Vasant Pawar, Vice President Kiran Moghe and Dr Dyaneshwar Mote, Convener of the AIGWU Pune Committee went to meet the Assistant Labour Commissioner and submitted a memorandum to him. There have been two meetings with the ALC subsequently. The Company representatives have been summoned and the Union will present a Charter of Demands in the meeting coming up next week. Despair is turning to hope, and frustration is giving way to a resolve to struggle. They are on the right path!
