On 31st August 2024, Dunzo laid off 150 of its 200 employees, i.e. 75 percent of its workforce, to cut costs of operation. These workers were told of this decision through an email. In the e-mail, the company promised to pay pending salaries, severance, leave encashment, and other dues in the future, when it obtained the necessary funds. Dunzo workers who have been overnight deprived of their livelihood do not have faith in this promise. The company is yet to pay salaries including full and final settlements to several former employees.
Dunzo is a Bengaluru based Indian company that was founded in 2014. Initially it began as a service to pick up and deliver packages within the city. Later, it expanded into a service platform, delivering fruits and vegetables, meat, pet supplies, food, and medicines in major cities. It has big shareholders, like Reliance Retail which holds 25.8 percent of the shares, making it the single largest shareholder, followed by Google and other investors. But Dunzo has been unable to raise funds that it needs for its business. The workers are paying for this with their livelihood.
This is the situation facing a large section of the working class in the Tech industry. More than 90,000 IT workers have been laid off since January 2024 by companies like Dell, Infosys, TCS and WIPRO.
Another extremely vulnerable sector has been ecommerce, epayment platforms and educational-technology (EdTech). The workers in this sector are largely employed on contractual basis and can be hired and fired at will by their employers. Paytm laid off 3500 workers in June 2024, while another payment platform Simpl fired close to 200 workers in May 2024. Several EdTech firms like Byjus and Unacademy were reported to have laid off hundreds of employees in the same period.
These developments bring out the extremely vulnerable conditions of workers in these sectors. The ideologues of the bourgeoisie have been carrying out massive propaganda as to how these sectors are contributing to addressing the grave unemployment problem in our country by providing jobs to workers. The truth is different. Taking the economy as a whole, more jobs are being destroyed than are being created. And even in the sectors in which there is growth in employment, this remains a temporary phenomenon.
The economy is oriented to ensuring maximum profit for the capitalist class through the exploitation of workers. Finance capital keeps moving to the most profitable sectors of the economy, abandoning those sectors or companies which have become less profitable.
Unemployment is a fellow traveller of the capitalist system. There is no solution to this problem within this system. Workers have to organise and fight to replace the rule of the bourgeoisie with the rule of workers and peasants. Then we can ensure that the economy is oriented to fulfilling the growing needs of the whole of society, instead of fulfilling the drive of the bourgeoisie for maximum profits. Then society will be able to guarantee that all those who are able to and willing to work will be guaranteed secure livelihood.