New Delhi: For the past month, hundreds of delivery partners employed by the Zomato-owned instant delivery service Blinkit have been protesting against changes in their wage structure, which they say was revised without any prior intimation.
Delivery partners staging the strike say the minimum compensation offered to them has been slashed to Rs 15 from Rs 25 per order. This follows an earlier cut from Rs 50 in 2021. They’ve also lost a Rs 4-per-order incentive during peak hours, which itself had been cut from Rs 7 in 2021.
Opposition to the move triggered protests in the Delhi-NCR region, resulting in disruption of services in Noida, Greater Noida, Delhi, Gurugram, Ghaziabad, and Faridabad.
Blinkit has approximately 200 dark stores or warehouses in Delhi-NCR from where partners retrieve items to be delivered to customers within a 1-2 km radius.
According to the App Karmchari Ekta Union — a Delhi-based union for app-based gig workers — although many dark stores across Delhi have now resumed work at 30-40 per cent capacity, delivery partners in Noida and Gurgaon have decided to press on with their demand to revert the minimum compensation to Rs 25 per order.
Despite at least 600 delivery partners having met a company executive in Gurugram last week to voice their concerns, the issue remains unresolved.
In a statement issued on 19 April, Blinkit said it had “implemented a new payout structure” that compensates delivery partners “proportionally to the effort they exerted” in making the delivery. “This is a voluntary exercise, and our teams are on-site to address any questions from partners,” the statement added.
Blinkit also denied that the strike by delivery partners affected operations and said that it amounted to a mere one per cent dent in revenues. It also announced that it was on track to shutter a number of its dark stores in Delhi and Gurugram.
A report by The Economic Times dated 25 April said more than a thousand Blinkit delivery partners across Delhi-NCR had joined rival companies since the strike began. It quotes industry executives to suggest that most of these delivery partners have now joined the quick commerce companies Swiggy Instamart, Zepto, and Big Basket, among others.
In an email response to the ThePrint’s queries, Blinkit said Friday, “We provide medical and life insurance to gig workers on our platform. They are free to choose when they work and for how long, and their earnings increase with the number of gigs they take up. All active gig workers can reach out to our support team through the app, where our normal response time is under 1 minute.”
Also Read: From fast food to autos, India’s digitally connected users lure investors
‘Blocked IDs, written undertaking’
Ritwik Raj, convenor of the App Karmchari Ekta Union, tells ThePrint that Blinkit allegedly blocked the app-based IDs of some delivery partners who took part in the strike. Their names were removed from the company’s database and they were asked to give a written undertaking that they would not participate in the strike, he adds.
Raj further says that for most delivery partners who took part in the strike before resuming work owing to financial constraints, the company’s actions made matters worse.
They were no longer getting orders and could not find their registered IDs in the company database, he says, alleging that most Blinkit delivery partners in Delhi were coerced into resuming work. Many of those on strike in South Delhi’s Vasant Kunj and North East Delhi’s Burari and Pratapgarh discovered that their IDs had been blocked, he adds.
Recalling the time when Blinkit was Grofers, Raj says delivery partners were then entitled to a monthly salary and benefits, including employer contributions to provident fund and employee pension schemes.
Grofers was rebranded as Blinkit in 2021 and acquired by food delivery giant Zomato in August 2022 for a whopping Rs 4,447 crore. It then entered the 10-minute grocery delivery space later that same year.
A delivery partner who has been working with the company for three years now tells ThePrint on condition of anonymity that there has been a significant increase in the workload of delivery partners since the acquisition. Delivery partners were not subjected to such levels of stress when the company was still known as Grofers, he says, adding that he got to know about the change in the wage structure through the Blinkit mobile app.
According to him, when the minimum compensation was Rs 50 per order, delivery agents were paid Rs 8 for every order delivered beyond 4 km.
“Under the Rs 25 rate card, it was brought down to an extra Rs 2 for over 4 km. Under the Rs 15 rate card, we are paid on the basis of the distance with no incentives in the picture. So, if we make an order of 1 km, we are often paid only Rs 10-12. The Rs 15 rate card is just in name. Blinkit now uses a GPS system where even if we take a shortcut, the company will pay for the route taken and not the original amount for the original route. Furthermore, during peak hours, say from 6-11 am, when customer orders are more and more delivery partners are present, Blinkit reduces the pay per order,” he adds.
He explains that Blinkit places its delivery partners in two categories — diamond and silver. Taking leave results in demotion to the silver category, which entails diminished incentives, he adds. He further says that the company has an attendance app that it uses to ensure that delivery partners are on duty nine hours each day, but a significant share of the orders are assigned after the nine-hour fixed shift ends.
According to him, there is no grievance redressal mechanism for delivery partners and the only avenue available to them to voice their concerns — an automated helpline — is met with no response when dialled.
‘Companies not treating them as employees’
Gig workers, or individuals who earn a livelihood outside the typical employer-employee relationship, can be roughly categorised as platform-based or non-platform-based.
Platform-based gig workers work with the help of digital platforms, while non-platform-based workers are typically employed part-time or are self-employed in traditional industries.
According to a NITI Aayog report published in 2022 titled ‘India’s Booming Gig and Platform Economy’, the country had 77 lakh gig workers in 2021-21.
Rikta Krishnaswamy, coordinator of the All India Gig Workers Union, tells ThePrint that app-based companies control the compensation per order and that the overall earnings of gig workers have witnessed a decline.
“Often, cost-cutting is done in the name of efficiency and yet the workers get no added benefits. They are not even categorised as workers. None of the criteria of the Delhi Shops and Establishment Act (1954) are adhered to,” she says.
She adds, “Neither are the workers getting the monthly minimum wage of Rs 16,250, nor are they given sick or paid leaves. The work hours aren’t fixed either.”
Notably, the Delhi Shops and Establishment Act has a provision under which leaves are a guaranteed right of workers.
“They (delivery partners) are working for 12 hours, with no incentives, not even the minimum wage, and you are still not treating them as employees. In order to define their relationships and appear flexible, companies obfuscate their actual relationship with the worker and deny them even basic rights,” says Krishnaswamy.
(This is an updated version of the report)
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
Also Read: Indians just can’t have enough of biryani — 2.28 orders placed every second on Swiggy