How India’s Gig Worker Unions Are Fighting for Change

Syed Lateefuddin was only in the first week of his job as a driver for Uber when an early dawn ride changed his life. Lateefuddin, who is Muslim, accepted a ride around 3:30 am and was driving across the streets of southern India’s metropolis of Hyderabad—home to 11 million people and located about 440 miles east of Mumbai—when six men accosted him.

The men trailed him and later attacked him, forcing him to chant Hindu religious slogans and pelting his car with stones, causing severe damage to its windows and windshield. Through sheer luck, Lateefuddin lived to tell his story. But even today, he is still angry about how his calls to Uber’s emergency helpline services went unanswered.

Religious and caste-based discrimination is increasingly common for India’s gig and platform workers, with a rising number of attacks and targeting of specifically Muslim delivery workers and drivers. And despite a booming gig economy, India’s workers in the sector remain largely unprotected.

For India’s nearly eight million gig workers, workplace safety and protection from discrimination remains a distant dream. But that is changing as they organize into unions to secure labor rights.

A Growing Labor Union Movement

Religious and caste-based discrimination is increasingly common for India’s gig and platform workers.

According to a 2022 report by the Indian government-backed public policy group NITI Aayog, the number of Indian gig workers is expected to rise to 23.5 million by the decade’s end. Yet, gig workers like Lateefuddin struggle to survive in jobs that remain outside of the traditionally defined “employer–employee” relationship.

That’s where unions like the Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers (IFAT) and the Telangana Gig & Platform Workers’ Union (TGPWU) come in. When 39-year-old Shaik Salauddin decided to work for app-based companies like Ola and Uber in 2014, he did not anticipate how different it would be from his prior life as a rental taxi driver.

“The first few months, my earnings were great. But then I started noticing my earnings, and those of my peers, were falling. I know of at least two Uber driver friends in Hyderabad, where we worked, who were pushed into committing suicide. They were financially struggling after being unable to pay back the loans on which they purchased their cars, and the company didn’t offer any help,” Salauddin says.

Millions of gig workers lack pensions, maternity leave, health insurance, and compensation for death by accident or injuries on the job.

These suicides prompted Salauddin to call for a protest in 2018, where he and other drivers mobilized after seeing Uber’s lack of a response to the suicide of a struggling driver. The protest didn’t garner much traction, but it set Salauddin on the path toward forming a union.

Six years later, the IFAT and TGPWU unions have over 40,000 and 10,000 members, respectively. IFAT operates nationally, and TGPWU focuses exclusively on organizing gig workers in the southern state of Telangana.

The Struggle for Rights and Legal Recognition

The gig economy offers the lure of income for many Indians, particularly as the country faces a rising unemployment rate. For women in particular, gig jobs, such as providing at-home beauty services with app-based platforms like Urban Company, have allowed them to earn more and even choose their work hours. But the promise of income and allure of flexibility has been marred by the realities of subpar working conditions.

Indian labor law leaves millions of gig workers ambiguously defined. Only four years ago, the country’s Code on Social Security first defined what a gig worker is. Under the current definition, a gig worker is a “person who performs work or participates in a work arrangement and earns from such activities outside of the traditional employer-employee relationship.”

Shaik Salauddin, now IFAT’s national union leader, tells NPQ that it took “a lot of effort and hard work to engage with the Indian government to ensure we get social security.” Despite this unprecedented legislation, the country’s social security code has yet to be implemented for gig workers. Today, millions of gig workers lack pensions, maternity leave, health insurance, and compensation for death by accident or injuries on the job—benefits that are standard for workers classified as employees.

The social security legislation mandates that app-based companies like Uber, Ola, Zomato, Swiggy, Urban Company, Shadowfax, and Porter ensure that 1 to 2 percent of their annual revenue is allocated to a social security fund for gig workers. But organizers like Salauddin emphasize that neither the companies nor the government have been responsive.

In 2021, Salauddin and IFAT approached India’s Supreme Court, asking to ensure that the government authorities and companies be directed to officially recognize platform workers as “employees” with the legal right to social security and insurance benefits.

Meanwhile, the companies that employ these workers continue to be opaque. None of them have given state or government authorities any data regarding deaths on the job. As recently as August 2024, a Zomato food-delivery worker died after a road accident while delivering food, but the company has so far done nothing for his family. Before this, in the same city of Hyderabad in January 2023, another app-based food delivery platform (Swiggy) saw a delivery worker succumb to his injuries after jumping off the third floor of a building while trying to escape being bitten by a customer’s dog.

Neither of the two companies have provided adequate compensation to these workers’ families, nor have they enforced any of the applicable worker safety regulations.

“We have no expectations from the private companies, that’s why we’re only focused on pushing the state and government authorities to act in our interests,” says Salauddin.

Mobilizing Gig Workers

Unions like IFAT and TGPWU have…brought many people together through teach-ins on…how algorithms work…for drivers and delivery workers.

Gig workers have mobilized by organizing awareness programs and workshops. Salauddin highlights how Telegram groups such as “Commercial Cab Drivers Awareness” or WhatsApp communities have become tools for organizing thousands of drivers, delivery personnel, and others in the gig economy.

There are also regular protests and strikes. Salauddin faces over 40 legal cases registered against him, owing to his role in organizing strikes and protests. “I keep going to court every week, because I still have many cases against me. I’ve even spent time in jail back in 2018,” he says, pointing to how a strike against app-based cab aggregator Ola led to his brief incarceration.

At present, unions like IFAT and TGPWU have also brought many people together through teach-ins on data protection and how the algorithms work, conducting workshops for drivers and delivery-workers at least every week across the country. They’ve also devised inventive campaigns, such as Twitter hashtag storms or Instagram “lives” and using catchy terms like “Selfie with Seatbelt” or “Selfie with Helmet” to ensure drivers and delivery workers take steps for workplace safety—especially in the absence of health or accident insurance protections.

Small Legislative Wins and Larger Visions

The workers have also managed to successfully push back on moves fostering religious and caste-based hate crimes.

For instance, in March 2024, the food-delivery giant Zomato announced a controversial decision to create separate vegetarian and non-vegetarian delivery fleets, where delivery workers would be segregated by food type, with distinct parcels and uniforms for those drivers bringing vegetarian orders versus those delivering non-vegetarian items. Given the association of eating meat with India’s marginalized Muslim and oppressed caste groups, the rise in mob lynchings over allegations of eating or possessing beef, and growing discrimination and targeted campaigns to ban meat, the move drew criticism as it imperiled the lives of these delivery workers.

In response, the unions harnessed social media and mobilized human rights activists and citizens to force Zomato to roll back this segregation of food delivery services.

Elsewhere, they’ve also succeeded in ensuring that restaurants allow delivery partners to use their bathrooms. Companies like Zomato finally recognize the struggle of gig workers not being able to even access bathroom facilities while on duty. In 2023, after several protests and social media campaigns, Zomato finally announced the launch of “resting points” for gig workers to charge their phones and take bathroom and water breaks amid deliveries.

“We as app-based workers don’t function like the traditional unions; we aren’t affiliated to a political party. But we’ve made incremental wins where others haven’t!” Salauddin exclaims.

One campaign was for drivers to receive fares immediately after each ride. Before, they had to wait, sometimes days.

Additionally, thanks to the unions’ mutual aid communities, 15,000 children of Ola and Uber drivers, food deliverers, and other gig workers have received scholarships. As India grappled with two deadly COVID-19 waves, these unions organized the delivery and provision of food rations as part of their mutual aid commitments.

In 2023, the northern state of Rajasthan became the first to pass a Gig Workers (Registration & Welfare) Act, thanks to gig worker union advocacy. Although the law still doesn’t offer “employee” status to gig workers, it provides social security and insurance benefits, along with a grievance mechanism for workers.

The southern Indian state of Karnataka invited public suggestions in June 2024 regarding a proposed bill to protect the interests of gig workers. Anupam Guha, a researcher and professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, highlights how this new law provides a more explicit definition of a formal contract between these workers and platform companies. The proposed legislation would also create a welfare board overseeing social security fund disbursement—and offer special social security benefits for women and disabled workers.

In Salauddin’s home state of Telangana, the state’s newly appointed Chief Minister Revanth Reddy recently decreed an accident insurance plan of 5 lakh rupees (approximately $6,000) for cab drivers and other platform workers.

“The gig economy is now indispensable to this country. You cannot ignore us,” Salauddin says. “And we’re only asking for our rights, our dignity of labor. This is not charity. We want to be formally recognized as employees, and treated as people with rights.”