How can online car-hailing drivers increase their income and rest

Experts suggest that through democratic management or collective negotiation, guide enterprises to establish a reasonable compensation mechanism

  Our reporter Zhou Qian

  "Worker's Daily" (September 02, 2021 07 Edition)

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  The protection of workers' rights and interests in new forms of employment is attracting more and more attention from all parties.

On August 18, the Ministry of Transport required online car-hailing platform companies to standardize their own pricing behavior, reduce the excessively high percentage, set an upper limit on the percentage, and announce it to the public.

The reporter's interview found that online ride-hailing drivers are most concerned about income and rest.

Then, after the quota is set, how to guarantee the right to rest and the right of reasonable labor remuneration for online ride-hailing drivers?

  The protection of workers' rights and interests in new forms of employment is attracting more and more attention from all parties.

On August 18, at the “Guiding Opinions on Safeguarding Labor Security Rights and Interests of New Employment Forms” (hereinafter referred to as the “Guiding Opinions”) routine briefing held by the State Council Information Office, the relevant person in charge of the Ministry of Transport stated that he would request the Internet Ride-hailing platform companies regulate their own pricing behavior, reduce the excessively high rate of drawing, set a ceiling on the rate of drawing, and at the same time protect the right of rest for online ride-hailing drivers.

  In the process of implementing this regulation, how to protect the labor rights of online car-hailing drivers by regulating the rights and obligations of the platform?

In this regard, the reporter conducted an investigation.

Under the algorithm, how to reasonably set the percentage

  In March of this year, Professor Sun Jinyun of Fudan University led the team to write a survey report based on the experience of more than 800 taxi rides. It mentioned that through algorithms, the platform has played a positive role in improving the operating efficiency of drivers and satisfying passengers’ multiple choices. However, as the algorithm continues to "improve", the platform has obtained a large amount of data, and can accurately calculate the maximum income of online car-hailing drivers based on the set maximum daily standby time and maximum passenger kilometers.

Since drivers receive the money after the rake, many drivers don’t know how much the platform rake is. They only know a rough figure and don’t know the details.

  “The rules are determined by the platform. When drivers download the platform’s App to run orders, they can only agree to the platform’s rules, and there is no room for negotiation.” Chen Wei (pseudonym) is a part-time online car-hailing driver who works on the road and after work every day Run orders on the platform, “Running in the morning and evening rush hour rewards 5 yuan, earning a little more than other times.” Sometimes Chen Wei can’t help but ask passengers when they get off the bus, how much will the order cost, and then look at it. How much money I charge, "It’s not okay, I’m even more annoyed by the calculation. For example, the platform stipulates that each order is 20%, but in fact, it is far more than 20%."

  So, is it reasonable for platform companies to manage platform practitioners through algorithms?

  Shen Jianfeng, a professor at the School of Law of the Central University of Finance and Economics, believes that algorithms are on the one hand the core competitiveness and business secrets of platform business operations, and on the other hand they involve the distribution of benefits between workers and employers.

Since workers have no ability to negotiate with the platform, the formation of algorithm rules should be discussed at the collective level, through democratic management or collective negotiation.

In order to ensure that the results of negotiation and participation are fair and reasonable, platform companies should provide necessary data and information for democratic management or collective negotiation; of course, in order to protect the interests of the platform, labor unions and workers should assume strict confidentiality obligations for this information.

How to protect the right to rest for online ride-hailing drivers?

  30-year-old Wang Xi (pseudonym) is a full-time online car-hailing driver. Over the past few days, with the state's supervision and restrictions on online car-hailing platforms, various major platforms have successively launched many discounts: "Commission-free" and "Rate-free" ", preferential incentives.

Wang Xi also wanted to take the opportunity to earn more money. He increased the daily time of online orders from the previous 10 hours to 15 or even 16 hours.

Just last week, when he was exhausted, he suddenly saw a message from the driver's WeChat group that an online ride-hailing driver of his age suddenly became unwell on the single road and was sent to the hospital.

  "He worked so hard, running 20 hours a day." Wang Xi told the Workers Daily reporter, "Such news can always be heard in our driver group. A while ago there was a driver who was sent to the hospital and was not rescued." After reflection, Wang Xi decided to change back to the original work intensity, "not to be exhausted in order to make money."

  In 2019, after the sudden death of a driver, a platform company introduced mandatory rest (drivers will be forced to rest for 20 minutes when they are online for 4 hours) and the longest billing time (drivers can not be online for more than 18 hours a day, and the total passenger time is 10 hours Stop sending orders).

  But can similar platform regulations really play a role in forcing drivers to rest?

Wang Xi said that drivers usually register on several platforms and use them in rotation.

In April this year, Sanya City, Hainan Province issued a draft of the rules for online car-hailing management.

It clearly stipulates that online ride-hailing drivers shall not operate more than 12 hours a day, and continuous driving shall not exceed 4 hours.

  Wang Tianyu, deputy director of the Social Law Office of the Institute of Law of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that Sanya's regulations on the management of the operating hours of online car-hailing drivers are a good idea.

However, the policy does not prohibit or restrict cross-platform employment. Therefore, it is worth discussing how to implement the regulations on operating time management.

He believes that increasing the income of online ride-hailing drivers is an important measure to protect drivers' right to rest.

The employment relationship of new industry workers needs to be further regulated

  In addition to high-intensity fatigue driving and the platform's precise "calculation" of online ride-hailing drivers through algorithms, during the interview, many ride-hailing drivers told reporters that they were most concerned about relatively free working hours and income.

Due to the many characteristics of workers in the new business, most of the online ride-hailing drivers have no labor relationship with the platform and no social security.

How to protect their labor rights?

  In this regard, Shen Jianfeng said that there are two obstacles in the current labor law's working hours and rest provisions applicable to online ride-hailing drivers: First, the current labor law rules apply to workers who have a labor relationship with the employer, but crowdsourcing From the current point of view, the legal relationship between the driver and the platform does not fully meet the identification standards for labor relations.

In practice, most of the platform and crowdsourced online ride-hailing drivers are not recognized by the referees as having labor relations.

Second, the working hours of online car-hailing drivers are relatively flexible. There are different online statuses such as online and receiving orders. It is difficult to manage the working hours of online car-hailing drivers using traditional working hours calculation methods.

However, it should be noted that the "Guiding Opinions" has fundamentally changed the above-mentioned traditional institutional structure by introducing content such as the category of workers that "does not fully conform to the conditions for establishing labor relations".

The "Guiding Opinions" provide basic ideas and institutional frameworks for protecting the rights and interests of workers in new forms of employment.

The next step is to accurately grasp the types and characteristics of employment relationships and industrial development status of workers in various new forms of employment, and implement the various ideas of the "Guiding Opinions".

  Regarding how to protect the right to rest of online ride-hailing drivers, Wang Tianyu envisions that a public management platform can be established, working hours accounts can be set up, and data sharing between various platforms and public management platforms can be used to protect the right to rest of online ride-hailing drivers. .

In addition, he suggested that companies should be guided to establish a reasonable increase in labor compensation mechanism and gradually increase the level of labor compensation on the premise of fully respecting the laborers' right to participate and negotiate.