You can refer your friends and brothers and sisters to the platform.[1] It’s not a hard sell. The platform promises an income that’s much higher than the other options in reach. In India, the prospect of 25-30,000 rupees per month is no trivial matter. And moreover, if your friend, or brother, or sister, registers an account with the platform and delivers that first order, you can take home a referral bonus.

***

At your cousin’s suggestion, you look into the food delivery platform and do some careful calculations to understand how much you can expect to earn after deducting the costs of doing the work. Your cousin had explained to you very clearly that you have to pay for your own bike, your own fuel, any repairs, etc. You do the math: 25-35,000 rupees means – even after deducting costs – you would make more than double your current salary. It makes sense.

You sign a lease for a motorbike, register an account on the app, and submit the ID and permits the app asks for. It takes only three days for you to hear back – you’ve been approved, and you have to go to an ‘onboarding’ session next week. There, you get the new-smelling gear: the reflective vest, the iconic backpack. They put on some training videos that they say will explain how this all works.

It’s all streamlined. You’re your own boss. Just look at your phone.

Do you want to accept the order? Click this button.

Ride over to the restaurant on your bike and pick up the food. Got it? Click this button.

Now that you have the food, you can see the customer’s address. Are you on your way? Click this button.

Have you arrived? Click this button.

A quick greeting, hand over the food, flash a smile. Click this button, you’re done!

…

The customer doesn’t come out to take the food from you? Call them through the app and tell them you can’t find them.

A quick greeting, hand over the food, flash a smile. Click this button, you’re done!

…

If you have any problems, click this button to call 24/7 rider support.

...

You get paid by the order. The more orders you deliver, the more you make.

…

You can also earn incentives, or bonuses, depending on how many orders you deliver, aslongasyoudon’trejecttoomanyordersandyoumeetallthequotas.

On the weekend, the incentives are a bit higher.

If it’s raining, the incentives are a bit higher.

***

Your pace when you start out is slow and halting. Within a few days, you begin to get the hang of it. Your fingers learn to race across the app’s interface, and with each day your muscle memory helps you shave off a couple of seconds, until it becomes an efficient ritual. You know where to wait to get offered orders by the app, which times of day are best to fulfil your quotas and earn those incentives, and you’ve joined a couple of WhatsApp and Facebook groups with other riders.

But soon it becomes quite clear that months where you earn that promised level of earnings are few and far between. There are so many things neither you nor your cousin knew when you started this work.

You thought your costs were going to be predictable. But –

Petrol prices are going up.

Suddenly one day, you get an email that you are going to be paid by kilometre, not per order. You don’t really know how this will affect your overall earnings, but you’re suspicious about this change. The other riders in the WhatsApp group think this will reduce everyone’s income.

Your bike breaks down one day. It turns out you have to replace your bike tires and get it serviced. It’s a sudden and unexpected cost.

The city is cracking down on traffic - they raise congestion charges and levy a new toll charge.

There is no allotted space to park your bike outside restaurants. One day, your bike gets towed while you’re waiting for an order inside a restaurant, and you have to pay a fine to get it back. You waste a whole day of work in tracking down your bike. You get a 1-star rating on that order.

And though your costs are going up, your earnings are not. In fact –

Platform commissions have gone up four times in the past year.

The incentive levels keep falling.

If you get sick and don’t log in to the app for a week, your basic daily incentive falls back to the starter level.

The platform’s CEO goes on TV to announce that he is creating thousands of jobs in your city, but you know what this means. The platform is going to onboard thousands more ‘partners’ like you. More delivery partners, more competition, less orders for you. Anyone can sign up after all, just like you did.

You can see the number of orders falling with each week, and it gets harder and harder to meet your daily and weekly targets and earn your incentives.

You stay logged on longer each day, even working outside peak times, when there are barely any orders to go around. On some days, you work more than 10 hours, and deliver only 5 orders. Of course, no one is paying you for the time you spend waiting for the next order. You stay logged on longer each day, even working outside peak times when there are barely any orders to go around. On some days, you work more than 10 hours, and deliver only 5 orders. Of course, no one is paying you for the time you spend waiting for the next order.

You check your phone - no new orders. There is a notification from the WhatsApp group with other riders. You switch over to WhatsApp to read the message.

“For all the jobs in the world, the salary increases with time. Only for us, the pay decreases with time. I think the platform thinks that as time passes, we become younger, and the roads become shorter.”[2]

You sigh, and swipe back to the platform app. You refresh it by pulling the page down, while resting an elbow on the seat of your bike, leaning forward. You can see other riders milling about nearby, some chatting, some trying to catch a short rest uncomfortably on their parked bikes. Every few moments, like you, their eyes flit back to the screen in their hands.

***

Platform workers often have substantial work-related costs to cover, such as transport between jobs, supplies, or fuel, insurance, and maintenance on a vehicle. Workers’ costs sometimes mean their take-home earnings may fall below the local minimum wage. Workers also absorb the costs of extra time commitment when they spend time waiting or travelling between gigs, or other unpaid activities necessary for their work. The Fairwork Project advocates that platforms must ensure that platform workers earn enough to afford a basic but decent standard of living, after accounting for work-related costs and waiting time. In some contexts, ‘a basic but decent standard of living’ may be reflected in the local minimum wage, or local living wage. Where sectoral bargaining exists, platforms should aim to ensure that workers’ earnings match the wage level set by collective sectoral agreement.