An Indian platform company that provides home and beauty services has sued its female workers for allegedly protesting rules that the women say will hurt their earnings, in the country's first legal action against gig work, because of growing discontent with gig work.
Urban Company proposed a subscription scheme that requires partners to pay a minimum amount of money upfront, take on a minimum number of jobs each month, and a discount scheme for customers.
This will limit workers' flexibility and reduce their earnings, said Seema Singh, a beautician at Urban Company who has been named in the suit.
We will have to make ends meet because of the new policies, which will make it hard for us to make ends meet. Singh, 35, who has worked at Urban Company for four years, said we had no choice but to protest because the company wouldn't listen to our concerns.
Dozens of women, who the firm calls partners, gathered outside Urban Company's office in the northern Indian city of Gurugram this week holding banners and shouting slogans against the proposed new rules.
The Urban Company, which allows users to order services from manicures to carpet cleaning and repairs on a mobile app, said in its suit filed this week at a local court against four of its women partners that their actions were illegal and unlawful After two nights in the cold, the women moved from the site on Wednesday because they had no access to toilets, and feared for their safety at night.
Singh told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that they have filed a lawsuit against us for protesting, shows they are scared of us.
Urban Company did not respond to requests for comment.
The rights advocates say that platforms like ride-hailing and food delivery apps have taken advantage of the lax labour protections to demand long hours in exchange for low wages and few benefits like sick pay or health cover.
In October, a union representing about 35,000 Indian gig workers filed a petition in the Supreme Court for social security benefits from platform companies like Uber, Ola, Zomato and Swiggy - the first such lawsuit in the country.
Antonio Casilli, professor of sociology at the Polytechnic Institute of Paris, said Urban Company's lawsuit against its workers is unusual.
Gig workers are suing platforms to enforce labor laws - this happens more and more often. He said on Wednesday that the defendants are all women, and that is a first for a platform to sue its gig workers who strike to have labor law enforced.
In October, Urban Company women protested for better pay and working conditions, as well as social security benefits.
The company, which has more than 35,000 partners in India and in countries including Australia and Singapore, promised to boot the women off the platform, and then announced new safety measures and insurance benefits.
A social security law introduced in 2020 extended benefits to the segment, but it has not been implemented by Indian states yet.
Chiara Furtado, a research assistant at the Centre for Internet and Society, said that gig workers have faced a loss of earnings, arbitrary changes to their payments and incentives and lack of healthcare support, while app-based businesses have thrived during the epidemic.
She said platforms that use algorithms to assign jobs and calculate pay intensified use of algorithms during the epidemic, automating roles, including handling worker grievances. It increased the inaccessibility and non-responsiveness of managers.
She said that workers have increasingly used public demonstrations and protests to voice their grievances and demands, even as formal organising remains difficult for women workers.
Anweshaa Ghosh, a research fellow at the Institute of Social Studies Trust in Delhi, who studies women gig workers, said knowledge of the protests by gig workers in the world helps boost their confidence. Susing the workers is an extreme step to crush the movement.