Tag: industrial accidents

Crushing Labour Laws Amidst Successive Industrial Accidents Is Serious Insult to Injury

State governments have undertaken a slew of labour law reforms that could lead to higher exposure to occupational health and safety risks and no appropriate protection for workers.

Industrial accidents are far too common in India.

Two disastrous incidences of gas leakage at Visakhapatnam’s LG Polymers plant and a boiler blast at NCL India Limited’s thermal power station in Tamil Nadu evoked memories of several unfortunate industrial accidents that have taken hundreds of workers lives.

In last year, few reported industrial incidents such an explosion in a chemical factory in Maharashtra, a massive fire at the ONGC plant at Bombay High, a blast in NTPC’s Rae Bareli plant and Bawana industrial area in Delhi, attest to the fact that India’s industrial preventive measures and the safety inspection systems are inadequate and ineffective in ensuring the workers’ safety.

Even if it is just the industrial accidental tragedy with the significant toll that makes the headlines, its actual impact for making comprehensive occupational health and safety legislation seems to be a far-off prospect. In the time of a health crisis, the government adopted stringent measures not only to restrict the movement of people but also enforced a total shutdown of industrial factories – except those units producing essential commodities – and other working establishments to ensure physical distancing.

With this policy, India may be able to contain the virus; however, it could be a staggering task for the state to avert potential industrial accidents due to 42 days of a complete shutdown of factories and their operations that use synthetic inflammable substances and hazardous chemicals. For ensuring smooth production, the manufacturing units need to undertake routine maintenance tasks and those must be inspected by the Directorate General Factory Advice Service periodically.

However, owing to the higher overhead repairing costs, it is observed that Indian employers pay more attention to corrective maintenance (i.e. replacement of machinery when the complete breakdown occurs) relative to preventive maintenance where scheduled maintenance of machines and equipment is undertaken at regular intervals to avoid breakdowns.

Also read: Longer Working Hours, Employee Productivity and the COVID-19 Economic Slump

So in order to minimise the recurring costs, employers are engaging in risky behaviour by allowing workers to work in hazardous conditions. Therefore, on one hand, employers are reluctant to incur preventive maintenance costs to avoid additional overhead. On the other, the Indian labour administration is under tremendous pressure from the government’s pro-employer policies that are offering leeway to employers from regulatory controls.

In this case, neither the employers nor employees would be better off, as it will promote unhealthy competition among Indian firms and would eventually thrust out around 19.5 million of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises from the product market.

Labyrinth of India’s labour legislations 

The principle legislation of the Factories Act of 1948 ( the Act) governs the working conditions and safety measures for registered factory workers. Despite its vast volume, the existing legislation is applicable only to factories that employ ten or more workers; it covers only a small proportion of workers.

According to the Sixth Economic Census, 97.39 million (45%) work in establishments without any hired worker; whereas, 118 million (55%) of workers works in establishments with at least one hired worker. Broadly, the former category falls under the Shops and Establishment Act and later with the Factories Act.

Across the employment threshold sizes, 172 millions of workers (79.85%) works in the establishments that have less than nine workers and 20.1 million are employed in establishments which have more than 10 and less than 49 workers. Only 17.60 million (8%) work in establishments with more than 100 workers.

A migrant worker rides a cart with his family on a highway as they return to their villages, during a 21-day nationwide lockdown to limit the spreading of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Ghaziabad, on the outskirts of New Delhi, March 27, 2020. Photo: Reuters/Adnan Abidi/Files

As per the annual report of Directorate General Factory Advice Service, there are 31,602 factory units are registered under the hazardous industry category employing 1.97 million workers in 2013, which increased to 32,956 units employing 2.32 million in 2014 u/s 2(CB) of Factories Act, 1948. Due to its constricting legislative approach, 169.3 millions of workers who legally may not be working in the scheduled hazardous industries but are engaged in the hazardous process are absolutely excluded from the purview of occupational safety and health laws due to the employee threshold criteria of the Act.

Also read: Adityanath Govt in UP to Suspend Key Labour Laws, Workers’ Rights for Three Years

Industrial accidents and prevalence of fatality risk

The prevalence of industrial accidental deaths is notably high in the manufacturing industries. It will have a multiplier effect in exacerbating the risk when it is accompanied by the prolonged dysfunctional manufacturing processes and inadequate staff during the lockdown period.

Data from the Ministry of Labour and Employment also reveals that 3,562 workers lost their lives and around 51,124 were injured in factory accidents between 2014-16. These figures may have increased; however, the official statistics are yet to be updated for the last two years. According to the official figures of labour bureau the fatal accidental incidental rate per 1,000 workers was 0.53% (fatal) in 2013 which increased to 0.63% in 2014 for the factories registered under the Factories Act of 1948.

Similarly, the frequency rate for fatal accidents per lakh worker was 0.30% (in 2013) that increased to 0.43% point in 2014. Despite the increasing manufacturing and mining activities, regulatory authorities ensuring occupational safety have been limited to 1,400 safety officers, 1,154 factory inspectors, and 27 medical inspectors for the central sphere across all states. Therefore, the health hazard and fatality risk of working in Indian factories have increased tremendously and it could likely to continue unless a routine inspection and mandatory safety clearance are enforced effectively.

Turing a blind eyes

An uncertainly of livelihood, wage loss and layoffs would likely to linger much longer and will be persisted in the post-lockdown period. In these difficult times, many state governments have undertaken a slew of labour law reforms that potentially lead to higher exposure to occupational health and safety risks, no appropriate protection, and an increased likelihood that they will suffer from illness, accident or death.

For instance, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Uttar Pradesh have amended the Factories Act that allows firms to extend a factory worker’s daily shift to 12 hours per day, from the existing eight hours per day to revive the economy. Excessive working hours have negative effects on workers’ health which leads to poor immunity and exposes them to a higher risk of industrial accidents.

Also read: Labour Law Reform: Was a Sledgehammer Needed When Employment Itself Is Uncertain?

Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh took a frog’s leap to exempts all from labour legislation for the next three years as a measure to revive the economy. This reform may further give reason to employers to circumvent essential labour laws but will cause them severe productivity losses. In a bid to accelerate the economic recovery, the state is externalising the cost of reform onto workers by waning out its own enforcement mechanism.

India’s efforts in encouraging occupational and industrial safety remain frail. The proposed Code in the de jure spirit obliges employers to provide for a risk-free workplace and instruct employees on safety protocol. It further assumes that all employers will self-enforce these Codes without any deterrence from enforcement authorities.

Existing evidence shows that if we allow self-enforcement of labour laws though nudging the behaviour of employers, then employers would likely engage in an opportunistic rent-seeking behaviour to maximize their own self-interests of profit. Hence, the behavioural altruism on the part of employers offers less credence in safeguarding the rights of workers.

Second, the labour inspectorate is entrusted with the power to inquire into accidents and conduct inspections and to frame penalties – both civil and criminal – on employers in case of non-adherence. However, in the proposed Code, the statutory powers of labour administration have been curtailed severely. It will be considered as inspector-cum-facilitators who initiate the legal proceedings but will not able to frame criminal penalties on employers.

Instead of protecting the workers, it is now redefined to protect the interest of employers. The code also restricts the appeal of a person aggrieved due to industrial accidents or industries or any employment-related causes thereof is to file a writ petition before the relevant high court. This may lead to the denial of access to justice to challenge issues before a lower court. As a result, there will be longer pendency of labour disputes and delayed justice to the aggrieved workers.

India’s jump from 130th (2016) to 63rd (2019) rank in the Ease of Doing Business (EDB) is boasted across all industries. Every year, whenever India tops the higher rank on EDB, our global ranking point estimate slips towards the bottom quartile in all global parameters such as hunger, peace, slavery, worst formed labour and workers’ rights indexes on the lowest scale.

To soothe the Centre, all states government are now engaged in a race to bottom to reform existing labour market institutions to encourage ease of doing business and to promote flexibility. Hence, the two unfortunate disastrous incidents that recently took place have propelled us to reimagine the future of Indian workers and industrial relation systems in the neoliberal order and the pandemic.

Rahul Suresh Sapkal is an assistant professor at the Centre for Labour Studies, School of Management and Labour Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

The Life of Labour: 17 Workers Killed In Fire At a Delhi Warehouse, 50K Telecom Workers to Lose Jobs

Latest news updates from the world of work.

The Life of Labour, a compilation of important labour developments from around the world, will be delivered to your inbox every Sunday at 10 am. Click here to subscribe.

Illustration by Aliza Bakht

Illustration by Aliza Bakht

17 workers killed in blaze at firecracker storage unit in Delhi

“Seventeen people were killed and two injured in a massive blaze at a firecracker storage unit in outer Delhi’s Bawana industrial area this evening, a Delhi Fire Services official said, even as the city government ordered an enquiry into the incident.” Read the full report on The Wire.

Scheme workers protest across India demanding an end to discrimination

Lakhs of workers across India participated in a day-long protest on January 17 against the discrimination in government employment. Over 50 lakh workers are engaged on a contractual basis by Central and State governments in various departments. They are recruited under various schemes ranging from public health, education and municipal services. They are not considered as government employees even though they are in perennial and essential occupation. They are severely underpaid and have no job guarantee and other perks. Workers have been agitating against these measures and demanding regularisation of their tenure at various levels. This time all central trade unions have come together in organising a national level protest, bringing together the disparate sections of the workers together.

News Click reports that there have been attempts to force workers from participating in these protests. Officers have sent intimidating letters and notices warning workers from participating in the protests. Yet, the protests were largely successful and the central trade unions are contemplating intensifying their agitation by ‘jail bharoa’ (fill the prisons) andolan to press their demands. More protests are planned for the following week in Chennai.

National Employability Enhancement Mission: A ploy to get free labour?

Over 100 permanent workers at the Ashok Leyland factory in Chennai went on a gate protest on January 10 demanding that the management stop employing trainees in production. While many institutions had been employing workers as ‘trainees’ for up to 3 years, this classification was not part of the legal terminology. But since 2013, in the name of improving employability among the youth, the central government has been amending the AICTE act to allow companies to employ trainees in full production activity while paying below minimum wage and benefits. The recent amendments in 2017 have further relaxed regulations such that a ‘trainee’ appointed under NEEM would not be the responsibility of the company but a middle ‘agent’. This effectively institutionalises contract labour system in the guise of improving skill and employment. With Ashok Leyland signing into this network, the apprehensions of the permanent workers have increased.

Gurgaon workers ‘punished’ for forming union

10 workers have been suspended or transferred by SPM Autocomp Systems Pvt. Ltd. in Gurgaon after the workers filed an application to form a union. While the charges are framed differently, the timing of the suspensions suggests that the action has been taken against the union leaders for attempting to form a union. SPM automotive is an auto parts manufacturer in the Gurgaon industrial belt. Over 40 workers of the company went on a silent protest outside the labour commissioner’s office in Gurgaon demanding justice for their fellow workers. They also allege grave threats from the goons employed by the company to break their efforts to form a union. The Haryana government has taken strong ‘anti-labour’ positions in the past, leading to major conflicts between workers and the state police.

Indefinite strike by contract workers of thermal power plant in Bathinda continues

It’s been 13 days since contract workers went on an indefinite strike against the planned closure of the Guru Nanak Dev Thermal Plant in Bathinda. Even while the workers have the support of the local community which is providing material support to the struggle, the workers fear that if the government goes ahead with the closure they will suffer severely. In this situation, the workers observed a ‘Black Lohiri’.

IT Union registered in Pune

IT workers’ stride to form unions to weather the ongoing retrenchments in the sector got another boost with the Pune chapter of FITE (Forum for IT Employees) getting registered in Maharashtra. While IT unions had been registered in the early 2000s, many had gone defunct. The present wave of unionisation began with mass layoffs in TCS in 2014-15. That was when FITE was formed in Chennai and initiated chapters in various cyber hubs in India including Pune. Recently, KITES in Bangalore and the FITE chapter in Chennai had received registration in their respective states taking the number of states with Unions for IT employees to three.

50,000 Indian telecom workers to lose jobs in 2018

Quartz reports on how the telecom sector is still reeling from the entry of Reliance Jio and that further job losses are expected in the sector. In November 2017, Economic Times had reported that “The telecom sector lost a fourth of its workforce, or some 75,000 employees, in the last one year as operators, tower firms and vendors consolidate to remain afloat in the severely competitive industry.”

International news

Public sector workers strike in Benin over right to strike

As events in the state of Tamil Nadu show, the right to strike is a pressing concern for the working class in India. In Benin, civil servants went on strike against a new law that takes away that right. New24 reports, “Benin’s parliament last month approved the controversial law to prevent the military, police, health and justice workers from going on strike.” This is not the first free-market reform that Benin has passed recently and protests have erupted multiple times over the past year. This time, the strike went on for three days as public sector employees tried to stop the constitutional court from accepting the law.

Privatisation plans of the Sao Paulo metro halted after strike

A partial strike by the employees of the Sao Paulo metro led to a city court granting an injunction against the bidding and privatisation of two lines of the metro. “Basically, it can be said that this is a privatisation funded with public resources”, said the Judge who made his decision. Riotimesonline reports, “Judge Laroca considered the minimum established amount to be paid by the winner of the auction, approximately R$180 million, low in relation to the costs of the construction of the two metro lines of R$7 billion.”

German industrial worker strikes continue, Opel affected

Reuters reports, “Wednesday’s strikes mean around 468,000 industrial workers have taken part in action since last week, the union said, with further walkouts planned for Wednesday afternoon and evening.”

Weekend reading

  • China Labour Bulletin’s report on worker safety: “In the three decades since the infamous Zhili Toy Factory fire in Shenzhen in 1993, which killed 87 young migrant women workers and injured 47 others, the government’s approach to work safety has remained basically the same: Reacting to major disasters with heavy-handed and coercive measures that do little to get to the heart of the problem or create a genuine safety culture in the workplace. Accident and death totals have declined from the horrific peaks of the early 2000s, however, that has as much to do with economic factors as government policy.”
  • The Bombay textile workers strike of 1982-83: Libcom has uploaded a pdf of Rajni Bakshi’s book on the nearly 250,000 strong movement in Bombay by mill workers. The majority of the mills were shut down and most of the workers lost their jobs in this pivotal moment of Indian working class history.
  • Watch: ‘They Respect Their Pets More Than Labourers’ – Informal workers engaged in various occupations shared their stories at an event in Delhi highlighting various issues and challenges that they face in India.

NTPC Accident Points to a Wider Need to Document and Reduce Workplace Mishaps

India currently lacks comprehensive estimates of all occupational accidents, fatalities and injuries that occur across industrial sectors.

India currently lacks comprehensive estimates of all occupational accidents, fatalities and injuries that occur across industrial sectors.

The blast occurred in the boiler area of a recently commissioned 500 MW unit at NTPC’s Unchahar plant in Raebareli district of Uttar Pradesh. Credit: PTI

The horrific accident at the National Thermal Power Corporation (NHPC) Plant in Oonchahar (Rae Bareli district of Uttar Pradesh) on November 1 has already claimed 29 lives, with over 100 scalded and injured workers and other persons being treated in hospitals.

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has issued a notice to the Uttar Pradesh government, saying that a “high-level probe into the matter is immediately required to ascertain the negligence and errors, if any, behind the incident which involves the right to life”.

The commission said that there was a need to ensure such tragedies do not recur. Workers who held a demonstration the day after the accident have alleged that the NTPC commissioned the new 500 MW Unit 6 in a hurry and in the process safety measures did not get adequate attention. One explanation that has been given is that blockages in a flue gas pipe in the 500 MW boiler led to a blast that let out hot flue gas and steam.

Also read: How India’s Sixteen Occupational Safety Laws Couldn’t Prevent Two Deaths

On November 4, quoting unidentified senior government officials, Asia Times reported that “negligence and the violation of established safety procedures” were likely the key causes behind the blast.

However, beyond purely technical explanations, we need to look at factors relating to negligence – a demand voiced both by workers and the NHRC. Boiler mishaps are one of the most common industrial accidents. Industrial labour expert Reinald Skiba has written in a paper titled ‘Theoretical Principles of Job Safety’ that “causes of an accident involving a burst boiler may include one or a combination of the following reasons: faulty materials in the boiler wall, inadequate training to ensure safe operations, failure of a pressure relief device, or violations of an operating procedure such as overheating. Without one or more of the deficiencies the accident may not have happened”.

Skiba adds, “In the final analysis, every accident results from faulty conduct of people, because people are always at the end of the causal chain. For example, if faulty material is determined to be the cause of a boiler bursting, then improper conduct existed either on the part of the builder, manufacturer or tester, installer or owner. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a technical failure or technical accident cause. The technology is only the intermediate link to the consequences of the improper conduct.”

Beyond the NTPC accident, there is also a need to bring down workplace or occupational accidents in India. Even the first step of knowing in a credible way the number of occupational accidents as well as deaths and serious injuries linked to these has been neglected to an alarming extent. As workplace accidents are understated to a huge extent, the wider realisation for major steps and matching budgets to improve workplace safety is missing in India.

To understand the seriousness of the issue of workplace safety, let us take a look at world-level data. Writing in the Encyclopedia of Occupational Health and Safety, Jorma Saari has provided an overview based on International Labour Organization (ILO) data. To quote, “120 million occupational accidents occur annually at workplaces worldwide. Of these 2,10,000 are fatal accidents. Every day, more than 500 men or women do not come back home because they were killed by accidents at work.”

Pointing to the high risk from occupational injuries, Gordon S. Smith and Mark A. Veazle have written in a paper titled ‘Principles of Prevention-the Public Health Approach to Reducing Injuries in the Workplace’, that “one out of three nonfatal injuries and one out of six fatal injuries to work-age persons in the United States occur on the job. Similar patterns apply in most of the developed countries. In middle and low-income countries, a rapid and relatively unregulated pace of industrialisation may result in a nearly global pandemic of occupational injuries.”

Comprehensive estimates of all occupational accidents, fatalities and injuries are simply not available in India, but what we know is that accidents have been painfully high for a long time in sewage work, several kinds of mining, chemicals and explosives and ship-breaking. At the same time, some work areas not considered hazardous earlier are now becoming risky, as seen in the alarmingly high pesticide poisoning cases in the farms of the Vidarbha region. As the pressure of speeding up work has increased in several industries, accidents have also increased. Modernisation planning in many areas is guided increasingly by profits rather than safety.

A study of safety in Gurgaon Manesar industrial belt in 2015 by SafeIndia and Agrasar revealed that nearly a thousand workers experience serious accidents in the belt in a year, most of which result in permanent disabilities. In one accident, an industrial robot killed a young worker. A worker stated that in any factory, one can find ten workers with broken fingers.

While such sporadic studies and reports draw attention to the seriousness of occupational accidents in India, there is a need for building a comprehensive and credible data base at the national level and then using this as a resource for planning to reduce occupational accidents to a significant extent. Several countries like Sweden, Finland, Japan and Germany have been able to reduce fatal occupational accidents by 60-70% within three to four decades or even less.

Bharat Dogra is a freelance journalist who has been involved with several social movements and initiatives.

The Life of Labour: Occupational Health and Safety – A Special Report

Remember the Dead; Fight for the Living – International Workers’ Memorial Day.

The Life of Labour, a compilation of important labour developments from around the world, will be delivered to your inbox every Sunday at 10 am. Click here to subscribe.

Occupational Health and Safety – A Special Report

The triumph of… labour? A tributary promenade on Marina Beach, Chennai. Credit: nagarjun/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

The triumph of… labour? A tributary promenade on Marina Beach, Chennai. Credit: nagarjun/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

Remember the Dead; Fight for the Living – International Workers’ Memorial Day

April 28 has been commemorated as the International Workers’ Memorial Day since 1996. With its origins in the US, it has become an international day of remembrance of those who have been killed on the job or have suffered grievous injuries. It is also a time for the workers to collectively fight to make our workplaces safer. On April 28, 1971, after a long struggle by workers, the Occupational Health and Safety Act came into effect in the US. Ever since, unions there have marked the day as Workers’ Memorial Day. This has since been picked up in the developed economies and quickly spread through the world. In 1996, the International Trade Union Confederation began to observe the day as the International Workers’ Memorial Day, with events across the world. ILO, recognising its significance, has made it part of the UN system of commemorative days. April 28 is observed by ILO as the World Day for Safety and Health at Work.

In a statement released on April 28, ILO has maintained that the lack of credible data is a serious impediment to the work of improving safety and health at the workplace. In India too, the data on accidents and fatalities at work suffers from inaccuracies, discrepancies and under-reporting. Quite often, labour activists and unions are forced to depend on newspaper reports to compile data on work site accidents. In a recent interview with the press, Jagadish Patel of PTRC referred to the lack of information, while detailing worker deaths in Gujarat. He also raised the issue of banning asbestos in India. Mine Labour’s Protection Campaign also issued a press statement on this occasion detailing the health burden to workers as worker safety is diluted in Mines. Reuters has also published a report on health effects of noise pollution on workers in the power loom sector in India.

Numerous events were organised across the world to observe this day. Here are some reports from New York, England, Australia, New Zealand, and several cities of Europe. In India, OSH activists and trade unions organised meetings in Rajasthan and Gujarat.

Asbestos lobby prevails at Geneva at the cost of workers’ health

An international conference on regulating the production and trade of hazardous industrial chemicals was held at Geneva, Switzerland, between April 24 and May 5. Delegations from signatory nations of the Basel, Stockholm and Rotterdam Conventions participated in wide-ranging discussions on banning or regulating production, trade, and disposal of persistent organic pollutants and other hazardous chemicals.

Leading up to the conventions, trade unions across the world along with environmental groups raised the issue of banning or regulating the trade of Chrysotile Asbestos. Asbestos is still a major killer in the developing world, where its use has not been banned or regulated. WHO estimates that over 100,000 workers die every year due to exposure to asbestos.

According to estimates collected by Health Grove, India ranks second in deaths and years lost due to asbestosis. Though the trend is dropping, disproportionately more workers tend to die due to asbestos caused diseases every year. PTRC published a report titled ‘India: National Asbestos Profile’, which documents the use of asbestos in India, and the health consequences to workers. The report also indicated that nearly 50% of the asbestos use in India is concentrated in Gujarat.

There was a concerted effort once again this year, from trade union groups and environmental groups to include chrysotile asbestos in the list of chemicals that require exporters to obtain ‘prior informed consent’ from importers before being traded. Yet again, they saw no success, with India and seven other countries opposing the move. While most other opposing members are exporters, India is a major importer of asbestos, with minimal regulation on its use. FirstPost reported in 2014 about the clout and efforts of the asbestos lobby in India in influencing India’s policy towards this issue.

May Day recap:

Celebrations across the world

The Atlantic has a great photo feature collecting images of marches, riots and police confrontations from all over the world including “Moscow, Chicago, Paris, Manila, New York, San Salvador, St. Petersburg, Havana, Los Angeles, Istanbul, Bangalore, Seattle, Athens, Jakarta, Buenos Aires, and more.” You can view the article in full-screen and just use the arrow keys to scroll sideways.

In Turkey, people tried to march to Taksim Square where in 1977, 34 people were killed after shots were fired into the square from a nearby building. May Day events at Taksim are now banned. In Cambodia, thousands of garment workers marched to the Parliament to deliver a petition for higher minimum wages and more freedom of assembly. After a stand-off with the police, the petition was finally accepted by a representative of the government. There were similar protests by garment workers in Bangladesh. In Greece, thousands protested the forced austerity measures. In Portugal, one of the demands was for renegotiation of the national debt, the second-highest in the EU after Greece. See Associated Press’ reports from around the world.

Bonus: A Reading List (Happy Birthday to Marx!)

Other News/Reading Material:

  • Death of worker in manhole not registered under Manual Scavenging Act
  • As Uber Probes Sexual Harassment at Its Offices, It Overlooks Hundreds of Thousands of Female Drivers: “Because of how those ratings work, there’s an overall sense of fear among drivers that they could lose their jobs,” said Bhairavi Desai, executive director at the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a union that includes more than 5,000 Uber drivers. “For women drivers — these are often working-class women — they are struggling to make ends meet.” Female drivers of taxis have long faced similar challenges in terms of sexual harassment, though Desai said that the glass partition in traditional cabs does offer women drivers a greater sense of security. And unlike Uber drivers, female cab drivers can’t be fired for low ratings. Danielle, a female Uber driver in California, recalled one harrowing ride during which she endured harassment from drunken passengers in silence for fear of a bad rating. “When I told the passengers I had seven children, one of the guys said, ‘Your vagina must be wrecked,’” she said in an interview for the website The Verge. “Driving for Uber, this is my job, and if my rating gets too low, I can lose it.” So instead of confronting the passengers, Danielle laughed alongside her drunken riders.