Some online platforms improve on facilitating workers, Uber still lags behind

The Fairwork Bangladesh rating 2023 identifies reasonable improvements in online platforms' responsiveness towards workers' needs and demands; however, thousands of workers are still excluded from the recognition of labour law, which is a major reason behind their poor facilities.

The stakeholders in the report launch event on Tuesday (19 December) in Dhaka urged the government to recognise platform work in the labour law regardless of the employment type, ensure the minimum wage or wage equivalent income, ensure mandatory insurance coverage, and build capacity for managing the occupational health and safety of the workers.

This year, 11 platforms were reviewed and scored under the report titled "Is Bangladesh Ready for a Policy and Regulatory Framework for Platform-Based Workers?"

In 2022, the highest score was three out of ten, obtained by three platforms: Chaldal, HelloTask, and Sheba.

This year, the highest score is five out of ten, and one of the highest scorers is Sheba, a Bangladeshi platform providing home-based services primarily related to repair, maintenance, and beauty-care services.

The five principles of scoring were fair pay, fair condition, fair contract, fair management, and fair representation.

Sheba was awarded points for the principles of fair pay, contract management, and representation.

Another high-scoring platform, Daraz, scored five out of ten for ensuring fair pay, conditions, contracts, and management.

HelloTask was awarded a score of four, while Chaldal, Pathao, and Uber scored one, respectively.

"Platforms are only given a point when they can satisfactorily demonstrate their implementation of the principles. Failing to achieve a point does not necessarily mean that a platform does not comply with the principle in question. It simply means that we are not – for whatever reason – able to evidence its compliance," Ananya Raihan, principal investigator at Fairwork Bangladesh and also chief imaginator of DataSense at iSocial, said at the launch event.

He said that though there is no specific data on how many workers are involved in the online-based business platform, it has been estimated that the number exceeded 1 million.

According to research by the Policy Research Institute, the industry transaction was $200 million in 2016.

Around 113 workers were interviewed on the 11 platforms under the study starting in March this year.

The study found that around 50% of workers said that platform work is decent, and more than 60% said that they have flexible working hours. Around 50% said that platform work is attractive as the wage is decent.

However, most platform workers interviewed in Bangladesh earn far below the living wage equivalent to Tk23,254 per month.

The study also found that those earning a living wage work extra hours – up to double the standard working hours of around 208 hours a month.

All interviewed workers at Daraz, HelloTask, Pathao, and Sheba were found to earn more than the minimum wage (Tk8,000 per month).

Imran Matin, executive director at the Bangladesh Institute of Governance and Development, said, "Workers should be given opportunities to increase their income by increasing productivity. There is a lot of leakage here."

Razekuzzaman Ratan, president of the Socialist Workers Front, said, "Though platform-based businesses are emerging and expanding, they are still considered an informal economy, and exploitation is higher."

"The percentage of commission that ride-sharing workers are paying is not reasonable. Considering the workers accessibility, all contracts should be signed in Bangla," he added.

He urged the labour ministry to include the workers under labour law.

Hazera Khatun, joint secretary (Labour Section) at the Ministry of Labour and Employment, said, "We have recently recognised online-based workers in the draft revised labour law. But it is not final till it is passed."

The Fairwork project is based at the Oxford Internet Institute and the WZB Berlin Social Science Center.

The Fairwork Foundation, an initiative stemming from the prestigious Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University, has diligently worked to publish its annual Fairwork ratings for gig economies in more than 38 countries.

DataSense, a division of iSocial, serves as the Country partner for this vital initiative in Bangladesh.

The Fairwork team identified at least 20 different challenges and risks workers mentioned in the interviews.

The most prominent risk was that workers had to bear liabilities for unintentional product damage (such as broken or dented packages) during delivery, non-payment of delivered product or service (customers refusing to pay workers), and the security and safety of the vehicle.

Chaldal and Daraz stand out from other platforms in providing support when a platform worker faces health issues.

Notably, the workers who were interviewed said they received medical support, sick leave, and sometimes sick pay and financial support in case of sickness or accident.

Besides these two platforms, Foodpanda, Pathao, and Uber have insurance policies for their workers.

Sheba and HelloTask have been working towards introducing insurance for their workers, and Sheba has evidence of having a compensation policy for its workers pending the introduction of an extensive insurance policy.

Truck Lagbe is the only platform to have explicitly exempted itself from any liability arising from any damages or losses caused to the workers, including losses caused by accidents or injuries.

In this year's report follows up on three phenomena – platform debt, intermediation, and khaep (bypassing the platform) – and find an association among them. 

The incidence of khaep increased significantly from last year, with 40 of the 113 interviewed workers mentioning their experience bypassing the platform. 

While last year the phenomenon was identified only among ride-hailing platform workers, this year, the report found it among workers from ride-hailing platforms, delivery platforms, and domestic service-providing platforms.

Among others, Inam Ahmed, editor of The Business Standard; Dr Murali Shanmugavelan, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford; Ilmul Haque Sajib, co-founder of Sheba.xyz; and Asif Ayub, joint secretary-general of the Bangladesh Employment Federation, spoke at the event.

The report was presented by Ainan Tajrian, research manager at Fairwork Bangladesh.  

The Business Standard was the media partner of the programme.