Introduction
“The State shall strive to promote the welfare of the people by securing and protecting as effectively as it may a social order in which justice, social, economic and political, shall inform all the institutions of the national life” – Article 38 (1), Constitution of India.
“The State shall, in particular, direct its policy towards securing that the health and strength of workers, men and women, and the tender age of children are not abused and that citizens are not forced by economic necessity to enter avocations unsuited to their age or strength;” – Art 39(e), Constitution of India
The paper aims to explore a new form of employment - gig work - that has gained prominence across the world in the last two decades and explores how compatible these changes are keeping in mind the constitutional provisions under Article 38(1) & Article 39(e).
In India, the gig workforce is expected to grow from 77 Lakh in 2020-2021 to 2.35 crore by 2029-30 (NITI Aayog, 2022). Gig worker is defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “a person who works temporary jobs typically in the service sector as an independent contractor or freelancer”. It is Platform Work, a subset of gig work that has been on a meteoric rise. Platform based work is further split into on-demand work and crowdsourcing work (Stefano, 2016). Crowdsourcing of work is usually remote work where the labour has high-valued skills and has a very high level of agency to decide their earning potential and terms of works whereas On-Demand Platform based work is associated with local delivery of goods & services, where the labour can have low-valued skills and has minimum agency to decide their earning potential, terms of employment (Bharadkar et al., 2020). This paper focuses on the On-Demand Platform Economy (with specific focus on Swiggy) to better understand the nature of work, forms of control in this work and to understand how much the concept of freedom and flexibility that is thought of as being the characteristic feature of Gig work applies here.
Of the four factors of production - Land, Labour, Capital & Entrepreneurship – the most marginalised sections of the society have only their labour to offer to get remuneration. Thus it becomes imperative to understand how this labour is used by capital and entrepreneurs, how labour is controlled and what kinds of rights are given to this labour by law, capital and entrepreneurs. The paper is divided into four sections - Section I briefly talks about the current nature of regulations, rules and practices in the platform economy, Section II dives into the oft-talked principles of freedom and flexibility that is supposed to be inherent in Gig work and about the nature of relationship between the platforms and the independent contractors, Section III by taking the case of Swiggy analyses the level of control, integration and other relevant factors to judge whether there exists an employee-employer relationship between these platform based firms and the independent contractors. Finally, Section IV closes the loop on the discussion by suggesting a way forward in the platform economy, keeping in mind the needs of the platform firms and the independent contractors.
Platform Economy in India - Rules, Regulations and Norms
In India, various labour laws govern different groups of workers, this is done to ensure the rights, safety and working conditions of these workers and also to define the rights and duties for establishments that use the labour of these workers. Organised Sector Workers are governed by the Industrial Disputes Act 1947, Factories Act 1948, Employees’ Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 1952, Payment of Gratuity Act 1972, Payment of Bonus Act 1965. Unorganized Sector Workers are governed by Unorganised Workers Social Security Act 2008, Building and Other Construction Workers (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act 1996. Migrant workers are covered by the Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act 1979. Finally, Contract Labour is governed by the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970. Unfortunately, the Gig Workers and by extension On-Demand Platform based workers don’t fall under the ambit of any of these laws.
The four labour codes - Code on Wages, 2019; the Industrial Relations Code, 2020 (IR Code); the Code on Social Security, 2020 (SS Code) and the Occupational Safety, Heath and Working Conditions Code, 2020 (OSH Code) - which were enacted in 2022 have subsumed previous labour related laws mentioned above. The SS code for the first time defines what gig and platform work means. Section 2(35) of Chapter I in the SS code defines a gig worker as,
“a person who participates in a work arrangement and earns from such activities outside of a traditional employer-employee relationship”.
Further in the same chapter in Section 2(60), the SS code defines platform work as,
“a work arrangement outside of a traditional employer employee relationship in which organisations or individuals use an online platform to access other organisations or individuals to solve specific problems or to provide specific services or any such other activities which may be notified by the Central Government, in exchange for payment”.
The SS code provides for the formation of a National Social Security Board and creation of schemes for the welfare of this new class of non-employee workers - the gig and platform based workers.
But since Labour is a subject in the concurrent list, both the State and Union Governments can enact legislation in this regard. Thus, till the State Legislatures lay down the rules for these acts mentioned above they will not be implemented and older legislations will continue to be in place (Mohan & Muralidhar K., 2023). So even though the Code on Social Security talks of Gig Workers and about bringing them under the ambit of Social Security Legislation, this has not yet materialised and for now we have to rely on the older legislations.
Going back to the Contract Labour Act, this could have been extended to the platform companies if they were to be seen as contractors hiring the contract labour to provide services and goods, but this does not apply to them by lieu of the way the platform companies define themselves and their relationship to the independent contractors. By their own definitions as we will see in Section II, they are not employers but rather provide the service of connecting those in need of a service to those who provide a service. The implication of this being that, those “independent contractors” who use these platforms to provide their services are not their employees and the company has neither legal obligations or legal duties towards them. Thus, for now in India, there exists a policy and legal vacuum in which platform companies operate. This grey space where traditional labour laws don’t apply to these platforms and they don’t have to take responsibility for the people who use their platform is “Platform Exceptionalism”, a socio-legal imaginary where platforms are seen as unique, innovative and technology driven and thus can involve themselves in regulatory arbitrage (Doorn, 2020).
Nature of Relationship
The “Future of Jobs In India” report by EY (Ernst & Young) finds that 24% of the world’s gig workers come from India, which leads us to the question - What is so unique about the on-demand platform economy that it has seen such a meteoric rise in terms of the number of people who are joining these platforms as “independent contractors” ? (Rajkumar, 2020). It is not just jobs, the valuation of these firms have gone up as well, Swiggy’s valuation has been raised to $12.1 Billion in 2024, a 13% hike from when it raised funds in 2022 (Economic Times, 2024).
The uniqueness of these firms comes from the model that these companies adopt, they are asset light since the independent contractors bring their own vehicle/ equipment to provide their service. In the ride hailing space, the independent contractors own or rent a vehicle that they can use to deliver their services. In the provision of services through platforms such as Urban Clap, the partners bring and use their own equipment while delivering their services. The same applies to the food-delivery space as well, as shown in Fig 1, Swiggy mandates that the independent contractors (referred to as delivery partners) must have a 2 wheeler vehicle and mobile phone that they maintain at their own cost. The asset light model combined with the regulatory grey space in which these platforms operate, allow them the liberty of not classifying themselves as “employers”. Uber defines itself as “a technology services provider that does not provide transportation service”, thus legally safeguarding itself against obligations to the independent contractors who are on the Uber platform (Rosenblat & Stark, 2016).
Fig 1: Swiggy’s Terms & Conditions: Do’s & Don’ts
Source: Author
As shown in Fig 2, Swiggy in their terms and conditions when entering into an agreement with the independent contractors terms the service provided by them as,“facilitation services by acting as an intermediary between you and the customer”. In Fig 3, the relationship between the independent contractors and Swiggy is defined as “exclusively on a principal - to - principal basis”, where the delivery partner is given the complete responsibility over the services they deliver to the customer, additionally Swiggy claims to “connect you with the customers on this mobile app”, this service that is provided by the delivery partner will then be “ a separate agreement for services” between the them and the customers.
Fig 2: Swiggy’s Terms & Conditions: Services provided
Source: Author
Fig 3: Swiggy’s Terms & Conditions: Relationship between the delivery partner and the firm
Source: Author
Not taking up the employer tag, provides the platform based firms the benefit of not having to adhere to labour regulations surrounding minimum wage, social security such as accident insurance, maternity benefits, decent working hours and rules surrounding occupational safety (Sharma, 2018). Since, they don’t have to adhere to these rules, it reduces the costs incurred to the firms. The rationale behind this model then is that, this is beneficial for both the companies and the independent contractors. It reduces the costs to the platform based companies like Ola, Uber, Zomato, Swiggy etc. and at the same time it provides freedom and flexibility for the worker. One of the major benefits of the platform economy is claimed to be the ability of the worker to work where they want, they have ownership over their earnings since they can decide how long they work and how much they want to earn (Hickson, 2024).
Platform companies thus are making the claim that the practice of not classifying the independent contractor as an employee is beneficial for these workers since this gives them more flexibility, ownership of their skill, time and also allows them to be free from constraints and decide their own rules. But in reality, with technological change the companies are able to control the employees by using behavioural nudges such as the lure of incentives and bonuses, exert control over the workers by deciding their terms of pay, conditions of work, sometimes even hours of work. Companies use psychological manipulation techniques, gamification strategies to decide how choices are made by these workers (Will be elaborated in section 3) (Rosenblat & Stark, 2016). Further, the flexibility is really more for the company than for the workers over here, since in countries like India, when an independent contractor works in a platform based company, for a majority of them it is their primary source of employment (Bharadkar et al., 2020). The companies are essentially relying on the concept of numerical flexibility where they can increase and decrease the workers under them as per their need (Peetz, 2019). Since these platforms have low entry barriers and also have the option of easy termination, they are fast becoming a preferred model for firms, who can easily transfer the risks to these independent contractors while they are able to gain economic rent - where your earnings are much higher than the effort you have invested- without assuming much risk. This can actually be seen as a return to the “not there employment” or even the “putting out” employment model where the firms have used technological advances to create a fragmented workforce that has limited ability to collectivise and thus lower ability to make demands of these platforms and at the same time, due to gaps in legislations and a regulatory grey space, these firms can use the labour of these workers without providing them the benefits such as minimum wage, decent working condition or other social security guarantees (Bharadkar et al., 2020) (Doorn, 2020) (Ruyter et al., 2018).
The claims of freedom and flexibility are met then with counter claims of control. These claims and counterclaims create a situation of deadlock. This impasse was resolved in the United Kingdom when their Supreme Court ruled that the independent contractors who provided their services on UBER’s platform should actually be classified as “Workers”- workers don’t have the same set of privileges and benefits as employees- and not as “Employees” or “Independent Contractors”. The UK Supreme Court struck a middle ground by giving the independent contractors the status of “Workers” which enables them to access some of the benefits enjoyed by employees but not the tag of being an employee (Peiris, 2021). The court arrived at its decision by looking at factors such as control, integration and other relevant factors to decide the nature of relationship between these platforms and the independent contractors (Workers in the UK) of these platforms.
In India, the platform based firms continue to claim that their model is beneficial to both parties and in fact that they help generate earning-opportunities for the low-skilled worker. At the same time labour rights groups and workers who use these platforms claim that they are actually facing uncertain pay, bad working conditions, no social security and most importantly a work arrangement where they can be easily terminated. Ofcourse, as in all other matters, we have academicians, journalists, think tanks and interest groups that are on both sides of the aisle, who end up publishing reports, literature and articles that justify the side they believe in, sometimes backed by data and other times backed only by their conviction.
Employees or Independent Contractors: An analysis of the nature of relationship in Swiggy
It is the classification of “Employee” that enables labour to enjoy rights such as minimum wages, decent working conditions, the right to collectivise and bargain, the right to social security measures such as maternity benefits, accident insurance and pension. On the other hand, the classification as “independent contractor” in the platform economy comes with insecure pay, harsh working conditions and no job-security. Thus it becomes imperative for us to look at the true nature of the relationship in this model and judge whether this is an employer-employee model or is it an “independent contractor” model ? Does freedom and flexibility really exist in this model ?
Finally, the most important question is that of Control and Integration.The Control and Integration test are important for us because these are the tests the Supreme Court of India uses to judge the nature of relationship between a company and the people whose labour the company uses. The courts have used the Control Test in multiple cases such as the Shivanandan Sharma v. Punjab National Bank Ltd, Dharangadhara Chemical Works Ltd. v. State of Saurashtra and Birdhichand Sharma v. Civil Judge, Nagpur and the integration test was used in Silver Jubilee Tailoring House v. Chief Inspector of Shops & Establishments (Mohan & Muralidhar K., 2023). The control being talked of here is control over the nature of work performed and the manner in which the work is performed and if there exists a significant amount of control then that relationship is one of employer and employee. Similarly, the integration test here refers to the importance of the work done by the independent contractor and how integral is it to the functioning of the platform based firm, that is, as much as Uber calls itself a technology company connecting people or Swiggy refers to itself as an intermediary connecting customers with delivery agents, if the drivers and delivery partners did not exist, will these platforms be able to function by themselves?
The aim of these tests and the discussion around employee status is best summarised by the Indian Supreme Court, which in multiple cases such as the Hussainbhai v. Alath Factory Thezhilali Union and Steel Authority of India Limited v. National Union Waterfront Workers has said that the goal is to lift the veil around agreements that on paper seem otherwise but in reality are employment agreements, where the firms have tried to use subterfuge to shirk away from their responsibility to their employees.
In this section, the authors explore Swiggy’s model of functioning, exploring the level of freedom, flexibility, control and integration experienced by Delivery Partners who sign up on Swiggy and through this justify their claim for re- classification of relationships in the platform based economy to be one of employer and employee. Using the Participant Observer mode of research, the authors studied Swiggy’s model of functioning by signing up on the app and following all the steps as mandated by Swiggy to register on the platform. The conclusions made are also based on the author’s experience as a delivery partner on the Swiggy App. The experiences and findings of the authors are not anecdotal but based on how Swiggy interacts with all its delivery partners who register themselves to provide their services on the app.
As can be seen in Fig 4 & Fig 5, it is essential for anyone signing up on the app to purchase and use the Swiggy T-shirt and Delivery bag. While no explicit mandate exists to wear the dress or carry the bag, Swiggy in their training modules clearly explain that there is a “Swiggy Way” to deliver food. This Swiggy way begins by wearing the attire and then delivering the food, also Question 5 of the questionnaire at the end of the particular training module, as shown in Fig 6, nudges the partner towards wearing the Swiggy T-Shirt and carrying the Swiggy Delivery bag to get 5 star ratings. As we will explain later in the section, the ratings and the stars the partners receive from the customers is essential for a host of benefits they can claim from the app. Thus, not only is it not possible to register on the app without purchasing these items as shown in Fig 5, there are strong nudges towards actually using them as well. This significantly affects the freedom of a delivery partner to dress up in the way they want when providing a service to a customer, where the app claims to be nothing more than an intermediary.
Fig 4: Mandatory Purchase of Swiggy Merchandise
Source: Author
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Fig 5: Mandatory Purchase to Register on the App
Source: Author
Fig 6: Questionnaire at the end of Training Module
Source: Author
The “Swiggy Way” to deliver also pushes the delivery partners to always be smiling and pleasant when they deliver food, to apologise to the customers if they have any issues with the order, this is clearly a form of behavioural control where someone who is supposedly an independent contractor has to adhere to this swiggy way of delivery and behave in a particular way. This behavioural control forces emotional labour on the partners who are now expected to behave a particular way to get better ratings (Rosenblat & Stark, 2016).
Freedom and Flexibility as touted by these platform based companies is supposed to be the freedom to work when you want and flexibility to work at your convenience. But as shown below in Fig 7, we find that the partners are mandated when they sign up on the app to opt to work for a particular area, what is called a zone. The partners receive delivery orders only from restaurants that are located within these zones. While orders are received in these zones, the delivery of these orders may be in places much further from the zone. Thus, the burden of having to stay within these zones is enforced on the partners, controlling them to complete their deliveries at the fastest possible pace to reach back to the zone where they belong. This is clearly a form of control in terms of limiting the geographical area in which a person can work in. It also creates an unsafe working environment where delivery partners are rushing to and from in traffic to deliver the parcels as fast as possible so that they can get back to the zone to get more earnings.
Fig 7: Control over Area of Work
Source: Author
Also, as shown in Fig 8, the partners are mandated to work full time for 6 days a week with no option to work on weekends or part-time, this shows the intention of the platform to force the partners to work a set number of days a week. While the authors found that it was possible to not work for the entire day, it did come with the caveat that if shifts that are booked are cancelled or the partners show up late, they would be penalised for it. This sort of coercive behaviour and the lopsided power dynamic in the platform clearly shows the intent of Swiggy to control its workers.
Partners are expected to book shifts on the app to work, where a shift could range anywhere between 1 hour to 3 hours 30 minutes, there are no upper limits on the number of slots a partner can book in a day. If they want to get incentives as shown in Fig 9, then they have to login during slots that the Swiggy App decides for them, not cancel more than 1 booked shift and not reject more than 1 order in a day. This sort of incentivisation acts as a way to control the delivery partners to behave in a particular way, to work long hours to get incentives and forces them to act in a way that suits the platform's need to continue its service to an expanding base of customers. Thus, the platform not just controls the partners to manage them but it needs to control them to function. The delivery partners are integral to the daily functioning of the platform and thus they need to be controlled.
Fig 8: A Shift based system of working.
Source: Author
Fig 9: Incentivisation of Work
Source: Author
Another significant area of control exhibited by the platform is by dis-incentivising partners from cancelling orders and by maintaining an informational asymmetry on how the payment for orders is decided. As shown in Fig 10 & Fig 11, cancellation of orders results in a penalty of Rs. 40, this penalty is also followed by a form of psychological manipulation in which a jarring warning siren is emitted from the mobile phone for a period of 5-7 seconds. Clearly, it is the lack of freedom to choose the order one would like to deliver or not deliver, that results in an adjustment (a sanitised word used in the app to imply penalty). This penalty is also a way to control the partner to accept the order given to them by Swiggy, using the concept of loss aversion.The jarring warning siren should be seen as a form of control in which behaviour that is not conforming to the platform's needs is made to be seen as bad.
Fig 10: Penalty for Cancellation
Source: Author
Fig 11: Dis-incentivisation of Cancellation of Order
Source: Author
Also, as mentioned above the partners don’t have any clarity on how the payment calculations are made, there are mentions of a minimum pay per order, surge pricing and adjustments but there is no information regarding how the final calculation for payment is made. Questions of what is the pay per km, why is surge pricing high for one order and not for a subsequent one, is surge pricing based on high number of orders received per restaurant or is it based on overall high number of orders on the app, are all unanswered. Thus, a lack of clarity or complete information on how payouts are made reduce the ability of a delivery partner to make an informed choice. The freedom to choose is limited here due to incomplete information available. Further, this pay structure also incentivises workers to work during harsh weather conditions such as rain. The Swiggy App as shown in Fig 12, nudges the partners through multiple push notifications to deliver during rains, festival season, weekends and during peak hours. Delivering during rain creates an unsafe working condition for delivery partners, delivering during weekends and festive season takes away the time that they get to spend with their family thus denying them of a much needed relaxation and social interaction and finally delivering during peak hours which overlap with lunch (12-4pm) and dinner (7-11pm) time mean these workers don’t get to eat their meals on time, thus affecting their health. The platform is essentially pushing and incentivising the workers to risk an accident, risk their health and to self-exploit themselves, all so that deliveries can be made. This clearly shows how integral the services of these delivery partners are to the functioning of the platform.
Fig 12: Incentivisation of Work during harsh weather & weekends
Source: Author
An emotional labour attached with this job is that delivery partners are not allowed to enter restaurants through the main entrance but are to use an alternative entrance far away from the eyes of customers who visit these restaurants. Even during delivery to customers, there are instances where the delivery partners are not allowed to use the lift used by the residents of a building or are asked to climb the stairs. There appears to be a practice of modern day untouchability, restaurants don’t want the partners to pollute their space, which is reserved only for customers. In the residential complexes where the delivery is done, they are to move about so that they don’t pollute the sanctified space that these customers live in. This work that is done by the delivery partners, bearing the burden of this emotional labour where one is disrespected and treated unequal to other citizens, is integral for the functioning of these platforms. Thus the delivery partners who do these jobs are integral for the platform itself.
The last form of integration that can be seen on these platforms are the constant push notifications that are sent on the app to a delivery partner. In fact, when logging on the app, the delivery partner has to mandatorily give access to his/her location and permit the app to send notification. In a day, nearly 15-20 push notifications are sent to the partners that seek to incentivise the delivery partners to get back on the app and start delivering. The notifications are about surge pricing in their zones, rain in their zones and thus higher payouts, bonuses and incentives they can earn if they sign up for certain slots or certain days and suggestions on how to “move up the ladder” by delivering more orders. These constant push notifications show that Swiggy needs the partners to get back on the app and to stay longer on the app since these workers are clearly integral to the functioning of Swiggy. Swiggy needs these partners to work specific days, shifts and just work longer in general for it to function effectively. The author chooses not to address the control exerted over the worker by monitoring their location since this is seen as a necessary evil in the industry to track order pick up and delivery.
The final element of control identified in the platform based firm was its new health insurance policy which relied on a ranking system - Gold, Silver & Bronze. The category of gold (70 points and higher), silver (50 to 70 points) and bronze (less than 50 points) is dependent on how well a delivery partner delivers an order and how many orders a partner delivers in a week (Bansal et al., 2024). To put this in perspective, on average a delivery partner delivers 3 orders every 2 hours, which comes up to 1.5 orders every hour (Bharadkar et al., 2020). If we assume the workers work only 8 hours a day (a typical work day), in a day they deliver 12 orders, to then reach the gold ranking they need to work 5.8 days. Again, in all the 12 orders received on all the 5.8 days, they need to deliver a perfect order to stay in the Gold rank. This is near impossible, which is what pushes the delivery partners to work longer hours and deliver more orders so that they can survive in a system that exploits them.
Fig 13: Types of Orders delivered which decide the social security Partner
Source: Author
Fig 13. shows how a partner can score points to enter this club, but it is not completely in the partner's control to deliver a perfect order. This could vary based on conditions such as weather, traffic and most importantly the mood of the customer. The customers who need to rate the delivery partners may not completely understand how their rating affects the partner or even how the rating system is structured or how the rating structure is linked to the ranking system. The orders are classified as perfect, normal and bad, based on the ratings given by customers and based on how long it took them to deliver an order. A partner is then assigned points, which finally decide the rank they fall into. The partners are thus pushed to work harder and work longer so that they can get insurance. The platform has essentially gamified insurance in a way where workers are made to put their life on the line to get insurance for themselves and their family (Gold Rank) since lower ratings would imply they only get accident insurance (Bronze Rank) (Bansal et al., 2024).Here, we see that the platform exerts a significant amount of control on the worker behaviour, pushing them to act in a way that the platform deems best.
Based on the observations presented above, it becomes clear that the workers don’t have any real freedom or flexibility, at best they possess a notional freedom and flexibility. More importantly, we find that they are integral and crucial to the functioning of the platform which is why the platform exerts a very high degree of control over the work the delivery partners do and over the way they do the work. The platforms, as has been shown above, clearly extract the work of an employee from an independent contractor, control them in the way an employee is controlled but don’t provide the benefits that an employee gets to an independent contractor. It then becomes necessary for us to re-classify this relationship as one of employer and employee.
The best example that can be given to drive home the point that an employer- employee relationship is the need of the hour in the platform based economy is that Swiggy employees receive something as well thought of as a “Paw-ternity Policy” where the pet parents receive adoption leave, new pet leave and sick pet leave whereas the delivery partners don’t even get health insurance if they don’t work the way Swiggy wants them to.
Way Forward
As we’ve seen in the previous section, the platform based firms as analysed through the case of Swiggy clearly control the daily work life of a platform based worker, from where they log in to when they can log out, from where they can work to how they should work. It is also evident that these workers are integral to the functioning of the firm. As much as the firms make the claim that they are technology platforms that connect service providers with customers, the model of these platforms is such that they are in essence just ride-hailing platforms (eg: Uber, Ola, Rapido) or food delivery platforms (eg: Zomato & Swiggy) who rely completely on their employees (necessary for us to start referring to the independent contractors as employees).
It is also important at this point for us to acknowledge that the gig economy as a whole has provided employment to nearly 1.5% of the total workforce in India and this number is just going to be rising. Thus it is imperative for us to understand the need for profit-making/loss-reduction in firms that belong to the platform economy but we must balance this with the rights of the employees of these platforms as well. Since, a legal and policy vacuum exists in the realm of platform economy, these firms are able to operate without significant regulatory oversight or without having to adhere to traditional labour law. But as we have seen with the case of the UK, this is bound to change and this change is coming to India as well. Most recently a case has been filed in the Supreme Court, Indian Federation of App-Based Transport Workers (IFAT) vs. Union of India and Others, whether the Supreme Court uses the control and integration test in the way the author has done to decide for an employer-employee status or whether it decides otherwise, it would have far reaching consequences for the workers, the platform firms and the economy at large. Thus, it would be beneficial for the platform based firms to proactively classify the independent contractors as employees and take business and operational decisions accordingly, to avoid any burden in the future based on reclassification by the Supreme Court.
“With great power comes great responsibility” is a very famous pop-culture reference, the platform based economies have a great amount of power and control over the independent contractors, thus it is only justified that this power also comes with it the responsibility to take care of this class of worker by reclassifying them as employees.
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