Pearl River My annual trip to India was snakebit this year. The cost of the ticket was hundreds of dollars higher than usual, but that turned out to be the least of the problem. Scheduled to leave on Sunday, the East Coast blizzard was expected to hit Newark airport hard, which was my jumping off spot for Delhi. Wisely, I moved the flight to Monday, cutting a day off the trip. Who was I kidding, as the gods laugh at the plans of men? On Sunday, afternoon I was pushed over to a Thursday flight and couldn’t change the return, trapping me into a whirlwind 72 hours when I would leave at noon, arrive on Friday at 10pm, then after a day-long meeting, flight back to the US at midnight on Saturday.
After a posted two-hour delay, the departure time became more imminent, the very competent, 5-foot-tall female pilot came out of the gangplank, asked to use the microphone, and told us the problem. The pressure wouldn’t hold in one engine. The mechanics were having the part flown over from Houston, and it might arrive by 3pm. I was standing first at the counter; the gate agent tried to convince me that I might make the connection by minutes. I sat down and watched the line swell past 20. I didn’t need a weatherman anymore to tell me how the wind was blowing. I called to cancel and get the ticket refunded, as I texted the India team alternate plans and my son to see if he could fetch me somehow. As I got up to leave, there was an announcement that said, “good news, the part is here; bad news, the flight won’t leave until 5pm,” hours after my flight was long one. Plan B became a two-hour zoom from 4:30 AM to 6:30 AM, my time, with the team in India.
I had already missed the main event: The release of a report and the results of a survey we had done on gig workers attended by many government officials and nonprofits in Delhi. After years of organizing informal workers, especially street vendors, domestics, and construction workers, over the last several, we had broken unplowed ground by successfully organizing and registering a union of gig workers, mainly in food delivery. We had won a strike of 10,000 in Patna. We were central last December in a job action of 40,000 seeking better working conditions, pay, traffic safety, and heat protection. Lobbying we led was successful enough to win some social security and labor protections that are coming in force this year, advancing gig workers even as the labor code becomes worse for other workers.
Truthfully, we have a tiger by the tail. Current estimates have “this army of gig workers, set to expand from 7.7 million in 2020-2021 to 23.5 million by 2029-30” according to a government think tank. Even though earnings have been estimated at “just 34 rupees (under 40 cents US) per hour after fuel costs, but not accounting for mobile internet charges,” the “full-time drivers still outpace those for casual labor.” ACORN’s surveys have found that for most workers these gigs are full-time.
Our unions have organizers concentrated in Delhi, Patna, and Mumbai. ACORN’s directors on the call were begging for more organizers to expand to gig delivery hotspots in Bengaluru, but also in tourist-dominated areas like Agra, site of the Taj Mahal, Jaipur, the “pink city” capital and largest city in the Indian state of Rajasthan, and Kerala, a favorite on the west coast of India. To get where we are we’ve benefited from support by the British Columbia General Employees Union (BCGEU), the United Steel Workers of Canada, an inexplicable, but wonderfully generous anonymous US contribution, as well as significant local support from the Bengaluru software giant Syspro, all of which is critical, but even combined isn’t nearly enough.
In short, we’re punching way, way above our weight, clearly focused as the only formal union among food delivery gig workers numbering in the millions with our eyes way larger than our stomach. Our success with the government might be triggered by thousands on the streets and in the news here and there, as the vanguard for tens of millions, but potentially with resources and staff, we could number our members in millions as well, which would be a gamechanger for informal labor throughout the country.
Weather and missing flights are frustrating, but they pale next to the feeling that we are Tantalus, so close to grabbing such a victory, but finding it just out of our reach. I’ll get there sooner or later, that’s for certain, but we still may be running fast and working hard, but grasping in the air.