covid-19 pandemic: Virus takes a toll on blue collar staff; no pay for 12 crore

Bengaluru: About 100 to 120 million blue-collar workers, accounting for over 70-80% of the industry, have gone without income in the past month due to the nationwide lockdown imposed in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, staffing agencies and businesses told ET.

Jobs are also expected to nosedive in the remaining quarters of the year unless demand picks up by the festive season later this year, experts tracking the sector said.

“The slowdown started around mid-March and only around 2-3 crore (20-30 million) people now have their employment intact,” said Pravin Agarwala, cofounder of Betterplace, which connects blue-collar workers with companies.

Travel, hospitality, tourism, aviation, retail, outdoor entertainment, food and beverages and real estate sectors have been hit the most, staffing agency TeamLease said.

In addition, automotive, non-essential fast-moving consumer goods, poultry, dairy, shipping and construction will also feel the impact in the short to medium term, TeamLease said. “These sectors are bound to see the repercussions…we haven’t yet witnessed the peak, given most formal sector employees saw their wages by and large being paid in full and on time during the lockdown,” said Rituparna Chakraborty, cofounder of TeamLease.

“More challenges will come up after the lockdown is lifted. For informal sector workers who were left without livelihood since the beginning of the lockdown, it has been a daily battle,” Chakraborty added.

Contract employees are mostly paid by the hour, but during the lockdown they have earned next to nothing.

As businesses shut down, drivers, delivery staff, sales and business development employees have been handed pink slips overnight, with between one and three-month severance packages.

Apart from new-age startups like business-to-business ecommerce platform Udaan, food-delivery app Swiggy, social commerce venture Meesho and logistics firm BlackBuck, have terminated contractual employees over the last few weeks, even traditional sectors have been laying off staff, staffing agencies say. The gig economy workforce, part of the blue-collar segment, including shared mobility and ecommerce staff have seen incomes decline by 60-70%.

Employees from companies such as services marketplace UrbanClap and Swiggy said businesses were restarting slowly but demand is down by 40-50%. In the absence of a pick-up in demand by Dussehra, the number of staff will either stay stagnant or go down further by year end, experts said.