NEW DELHI: Supreme Court Judge DY Chandrachud on Saturday said there was an urgent need to protect the rights of lakhs of youths working for mobile or web-based apps, who deliver almost everything under the sun at the consumers’ doorsteps within minutes.
Delivering ‘Justice PM Mukhi Memorial Lecture’ on ‘Reconciling Rights and Innovation: Examining the Relationship Between Law and Technology’, Justice Chandrachud said with the introduction of several mobile- or web-based apps, the labour market has fissured and the gig economy has had significant ramifications on existing business models for food, clothing and groceries.
Expressing serious concern over the alleged immunity from labour law obligations enjoyed by app-based companies because these platforms are legally structured as aggregators and intermediaries, Justice Chandrachud said, “Their contract-based relationship with app-based workers does not fit within traditional definitions of employment, and the disaggregated nature of app-based work makes collective bargaining with platforms difficult.”
This has resulted in the non-applicability of the traditional labour law in India to most of the platforms, he said. “How, for instance, do the labour law requirements of maintaining a creche or statutory canteen or providing wages for overtime work translate in the emerging world digital spaces? These vexed issues are important for consideration across the domains of law, regulation, technology and policy,” he added.
“A distinct blueprint of legal measures to effectively improve the conditions of app-based workers is urgently required,” he said.
