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The Rajasthan Assembly on Friday introduced the Rajasthan Platform-Based Workers (Registration and Care) Bill 2023, which guarantees social security for gig workers in the state. Among other measures, it will be collected through a “luxury fee” for gig workers which will be charged on every transaction on the online platforms.
Explaining the reasons for the law, the state government said, “Despite their significant contribution to the economy and employment, gig workers make up a portion of the unorganized workers and are still not covered by labor laws. They do not receive the same level of protection as traditional employees.”
The bill expands “rights” to platform-based gig workers: registration with the state, access to public and private social security schemes, the opportunity to hear any complaint, and so on.
Under the bill, temporary service workers and active collectors/platforms will be registered in the state and a Welfare Board and Temporary Service Workers Welfare Fund will be established to mainly ensure social security for workers. The Minister of Labor will be the chair of the ‘Platform Workers’ Welfare Council’ which will meet at least once every six months.
Aside from the bureaucrats, the board would have representatives from both gig workers and from the state’s “assemblers, owners and manufacturers of goods and services delivered via platforms”; All four of these will be nominated by the government.
After that, two more representatives, one from civil society, will also be nominated by the state government. Another provision is that one-third of the board members will be women.
The bill also seeks registration of all co-workers and aggregators, saying, “Aggregators must provide the state government with its database of all platform-based service workers on board or on record with them, within sixty days of the implementation of this Act.” In addition, all those employed in visual work on a platform basis must be “on board or registered on any platform automatically with the state government”.
This information will also be published on the web portal. An important component of the bill is the “Platform-Based Workers’ Fund and Welfare Fee”. Under this, the Social Security and Welfare Fund for Temporary Job Workers will be established. Irrespective of other sources, it will consist of a Gig Worker Welfare Fee to be collected from the Pool, “which shall be at the rate (percentage) of the value of each transaction relating to a gig worker based on the Platform as may be notified by the State Government.”
The government also introduced a penalty provision. If any collector fails to pay the welfare fee on time, they will be penalized with interest in the amount of twelve percent per annum from the date such payment is due.
If any other clauses of the law are violated by the collectors, the bill empowers the state government to impose a fine of up to 5 lakh rupees for the first offense and up to 50 lakh rupees for subsequent offences.
Gilot announced the law in his budget speech earlier this year. In his speech afterwards, Jahlot said “Currently, companies like Ola, Uber, Swiggy, Zomato, Amazon etc. have engaged young workers under contract on per transaction basis. These workers are called gig workers. As in any other place in the world, the scale of ‘gig economy’ is constantly growing in the state. Today, the number of gig workers in the state has increased to 3-4 lakh. These big companies are not making any social security arrangements for these gig workers.”
The law came after it was proposed by social activist Nikhil Dey to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi during the presidency of the recent Bharat Jodo Yatra in Rajasthan in December 2022. Subsequently, Rahul asked Jahlot to introduce a social security and support system for gig workers.
With the government making provision of Rs 3.2 crore under the bill, opposition leader Rajendra Rathore asked how to “ensure that it will be given to about Rs 4 crore workers in the state with just Rs 3.27 crore”. The bill is expected to be debated and passed on Monday, July 24.
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