(Economic Watch) 200 million people are employed flexibly, how can they gain a sense of security?
China News Service, Beijing, March 2 (Reporter Liu Yuying) China has 200 million people who choose flexible employment, but people still have many doubts about flexible employment: why do people choose flexible employment?
Is it competing with manufacturing for labor?
How to protect the rights and interests of flexible workers?
Recently, a reporter from China News Agency interviewed Lu Ming, a distinguished professor of Shanghai Jiaotong University Antai School of Economics and Management, to answer the above questions.
According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, in 2021, there will be about 200 million people in flexible employment in China.
According to statistics from the National College Student Information Consulting and Employment Guidance Center, the flexible employment rate of college graduates nationwide in 2020 and 2021 will both exceed 16%.
"Flexible employment" is "flexible employment" in English. Lu Ming believes that it is more appropriate to translate it as "flexible employment" or "flexible employment". Flexible employment such as drivers is an 'old phenomenon' expressed in 'new forms' such as new technologies and new platforms. Under the background of fragmented and fragmented needs of enterprises and users, these new forms can make the time and space of employment more flexible. The matching of labor supply and demand is more accurate.”
Lu Ming led the students to do a survey on "Rider Occupation and Urban Development". Among the factors that make riders satisfied with their current career, the most important thing is the sense of fairness of "more work and more". Many riders earn more than factory workers and others. Urban white-collar workers; secondly, they like a flexible work experience. Riders can freely allocate time for a day, taking into account running orders, rest, taking care of family members, training and learning, etc.
In addition to meeting the diverse needs of workers, flexible employment also has an irreplaceable advantage for the manufacturing industry with obvious production in the off-peak season.
According to the blue book "China Flexible Employment Development Report (2022)" released by the Flexible Employment Research Group of Renmin University of China, 61.14% of enterprises in China are using flexible employment in 2021, an increase of 5.46% over 2020, and enterprises tend to expand the scale of flexible employment. .
In major manufacturing cities such as Shenzhen and Kunshan, many workers take out delivery riders or other service jobs during the off-season, and then return to the factory during the peak production season, forming phenomena such as "migratory bird riders".
There is a view that young people prefer to work as riders, drivers, etc., resulting in a shortage of labor in the manufacturing industry.
In this regard, Lu Ming believes that there is no necessary connection between the development of the service industry and the labor gap in the manufacturing industry. The key is that when technological development affects the manufacturing and service industries at the same time, two different results are caused.
"For the manufacturing industry, the development of the digital economy has accelerated the replacement of simple and repetitive labor by technology, resulting in the outflow of part of the labor force from the manufacturing industry. For the service industry, digital technology has instead improved the labor productivity of practitioners, such as online car-hailing platforms. The advanced dispatching system can allow drivers to receive more orders, which increases the attractiveness of the online car-hailing industry to the labor force." He said that it should not simply be considered that there is labor competition between the two industries, and it should not be advocated that " Eliminate" the service industry to feed the manufacturing industry.
Lu Ming believes that flexible employment may become a long-term trend, but it will not completely replace traditional employment, but will promote the diversity of the job market.
"Not all workers are inclined to traditional employment or flexible employment, and workers with different job preferences should be given the opportunity to freely choose jobs."
However, flexible employment is still in the early stage of development, and industry insiders have also noticed that it is not as complete as the traditional labor market in terms of labor remuneration, social security, and labor safety.
Therefore, the relationship between platforms and flexible employment personnel, especially how to arrange social security, needs further research.
At present, China has issued several documents such as opinions on promoting the healthy and sustainable development of the platform economy, including policies and measures related to the protection of the rights and interests of workers in new forms of employment, such as online hailing delivery staff and online car hailing drivers.
It is understood that the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security is formulating occupational injury protection measures in response to the issue of work-related injury and social insurance for flexible employees, and plans to launch a pilot program of occupational injury protection.
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