The myth of decent platform work

The year 2025 ended with two significant nationwide work stoppages among platform workers in food delivery and taxi services, targeting deliveries on Christmas and New Year’s Eve. The striking workers demanded an end to the 10-minute delivery model, guaranteed minimum earnings, and the elimination of punitive rating systems and arbitrary blocking of workers’ IDs. While platform worker unions claimed the strikes were successful, Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal, in a tweet, described them as failure, saying deliveries were unaffected on both days. He further claimed that local law enforcement kept the “miscreants” supporting the strike in check, preventing disruption of delivery work. The central government later required platforms to walk back the 10-minute delivery model – which unions cited as further evidence of the strike’s success.

It is noteworthy that while Goyal termed worker-activists supporting the strike as “miscreants” and praised law enforcement for preventing “disruption”, unions argued that these workers were exercising their legal right to freedom of association and collective bargaining. India’s current labour codes place significant restrictions on the ability of workers to strike, in keeping with the policy emphasis on “ease of doing business”. This suggests a government tilt away from trade union freedom, even as workers’ right to associate and their freedom of speech remain constitutional guarantees. 

Goyal also claimed in a podcast that Zomato terminates the services of around 5,000 workers each month on charges of fraud, and that nearly 1.5-2 lakh workers “voluntarily” leave the company every month, with a similar number joining during the same period. These claims raise several questions about platform work. According to the Annual Report 2024-25 of Eternal, Zomato’s parent company, the food delivery business averaged about five lakh onboarded workers during the year. This would imply that Zomato dismissed roughly 10-12 per cent of its workforce annually--an extremely high dismissal rate by industry standards. I raises serious questions about whether due process is followed in these terminations. Such practices would likely affect the emotional and mental well-being of workers living under the Damocles sword of sudden dismissal.

Second, the “voluntary’” exit of four to five times the average number of onboarded workers each year indicates that platform work may not constitute decent employment, contrary to claims made repeatedly by both the industry and the government. 

How has the Karnataka government addressed these concerns about workers’ rights? In the recently enacted Karnataka Platform-Based Gig Workers (Social Security and Welfare) Act, 2025, which seeks to “protect the rights of platform-based Gig workers”, the government included several measures relating to social security, transparency, and employment conditions. While the legislation is significant in introducing basic regulatory measures in a sector that currently provides largely unregulated employment to a young urban workforce, its provisions appear to fall short in important aspects.

For instance, in relation to termination of employment, the law merely requires platforms to provide workers with 14 days’ notice along with reasons for termination. There is no obligation to conduct a disciplinary enquiry to give worker a meaningful opportunity to defend themselves. The Act would therefore do little to constrain Zomato’s practice of dismissing 5000 workers each month --something that a requirement of disciplinary enquiry would likely have made difficult. Significantly, the draft version of the Karnataka law allowed workers to seek redress under the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, but this provision was removed from the final version.

The Karnataka law also appears to deny trade unions any meaningful role. The right to seek information from platforms regarding algorithmic decision-making is conferred solely on individual workers with no corresponding right for trade unions. Given the stark imbalance of power between an individual worker and a platform--and the ever-present risk of “deplatforming”--unions would arguably be far better placed to demand such disclosures collectively.

One may conclude that while the Karnataka government has taken an important first step in granting some rights to platform workers, the overall tilt of the legislation is towards preserving “ease of doing business”. The likely justification is that stronger regulation might kill the goose that lays golden eggs--even if, for many workers in the sector, this gold turns out to be little more than ‘fools gold’. 

(Mohan is a visiting fellow and Madhulika is a research associate, Centre for Labour Studies, NLSIU)

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)