The Zomato delivery agents in Thiruvananthapuram who have been on an indefinite strike from Tuesday withdrew it after company officials agreed to their demands during conciliatory talks chaired by Additional Labour Commissioner K. Sreelal on Friday.
The delivery agents, who took out a protest march to the Raj Bhavan earlier in the day, were striking work over arbitrary changes in their incentive payments, which have drastically reduced their daily earnings.
As per the terms of settlement agreed to by the company officials, the weekly incentives have now been fixed in three slabs. For delivery amounts up to ₹4,000, the incentive has been fixed at 15%, while for amounts up to ₹5,000, the incentive will be 25% and for amounts up to ₹7,500, the incentive will be 35%. The rain surge bonus for delivering food during rains has been reinstated to the previous rates, with ₹25 for peak time and ₹20 for non-peak time.
The representatives of the company also agreed to communicate the demands for considering the distance travelled for pickup of food in payments for the delivery agents. Currently, only the distance travelled for delivery is being considered. A team leader will be available on call regularly to raise the issues of the delivery agents.
Although team leaders were appointed earlier, none of them were available to raise issues, according to the delivery agents. The waiting time at restaurants have been reduced from 15 minutes to 10 minutes, after which the delivery agents will get extra payment for every minute. Show-cause notice will be issued to the delivery agents before taking disciplinary action including termination or disabling of account in the mobile application.
In recent times, there have been several instances of the delivery agents getting terminated arbitrarily. One of the clauses in the recent terms and conditions sent to them by the company reads—“Zomato may terminate the agreement and deny delivery partners access to the Zomato platform at any time without a reason for such termination”. This has now been reversed.
As per the agreement, the delivery agents will also be provided with a new offer based on the performance of six days in a week. In the conciliatory talks, the delivery agents were represented by delivery agents Balachandran and D. Suresh and DYFI district secretary J.S. Shiju Khan and district president V. Anoop. Zomato was represented by the company's Kerala-Karnataka State Head V.M. Hiran.
