DNA Money Edit: E-tailers need to protect worker rights

The recent filing of suit by labour unions in UK against three logistics companies working for Amazon for denying workers’ rights like basic minimum wages and holiday takes place at a time when Amazon and Walmart may share a major chunk of India’s e-commerce pie among themselves.

Instances of putting in long hours at work by the workers and still suffering penalties for undelivered packages is the reason behind the legal action by the unions in UK. In US, secretly recorded videos of a life of an Amazon staff inside warehouses had earlier gone viral. In India, we have heard stories about drivers of app cabs suffering physical and psychological breakdown because of longer hours and dwindling pays. Both Flipkart, recently acquired by Walmart, as well as Indian arm of Amazon suffered losses of over Rs 4,500 crore each.

Evidently, these losses came from acquiring customers and expanding the market. As these global companies grow bigger and eventually start making a profit, would their army of delivery boys and suppliers’ workers get paid better? Or would their private profits come at the expense of more social losses? To accommodate the elephant in the room, the digital economy, we, as a nation, have eschewed our right to privacy. Let’s not compromise the rights of these foot soldiers of the digital economy to a decent life.