Improve laws to protect the right to rest for workers in new business formats. A
reporter survey found that workers in new business formats have outstanding overtime work and expert advice
● The reporter interviewed more than 20 workers in the new business and found that all the interviewees work more than 12 hours a day and it is normal, and some interviewees often work 24 hours a week.
● According to relevant laws and regulations, Chinese employees work 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week; if they need to extend their working hours due to special reasons, they must not exceed 3 hours a day and 36 hours a month.
● It is urgent to protect the rest rights and health of employees in the new business in the form of law, and gradually implement the medical examination system, training system, rest and vacation system and remuneration benchmark system for employees in the new business.
□ Our newspaper trainee reporter Sun Tianjiao
□ Our reporter Chen Lei
Zheng Le (a pseudonym), 38 years old this year, drove an online ride-hailing in Beijing. He is a full-time ride-hailing driver on a certain platform and has five years of experience in the industry.
His initial idea of choosing to drive online car-hailing was simple, "I feel that time is free and I make a lot of money."
However, when he really entered the industry, he found himself wrong.
"Basically, I leave the car at 8:30 in the morning and can only go home and rest at around 12 in the evening. As long as I open my eyes, I will be working."
In recent years, with the rapid development of the platform economy, the number of workers like Zheng Le who rely on Internet platforms for employment has increased significantly.
Public data shows that as of March this year, my country has about 78 million workers relying on new forms of employment on the Internet platform.
The protection of the rights and interests of workers in new forms of employment has always been a concern of the society.
Recently, a reporter from the Rule of Law Daily interviewed more than 20 workers in the new industry and found that all the interviewees work more than 12 hours a day and it is normal. Some interviewees often work 24/7.
According to my country’s relevant laws and regulations, employees work 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week; if they need to extend their working hours due to special reasons, they must not exceed 3 hours a day and 36 hours a month.
Experts interviewed believe that workers working overtime in the new business form violate labor laws and regulations, violate their right to rest, and disrupt the balance between work and life. It is urgent to improve the legal system to change this situation.
The anchor works continuously for 14 hours
Tired and paralyzed on a chair in the live broadcast room in the middle of the night
"After introducing the last product and turning off the live broadcast, the time has passed zero, and I collapsed on my chair." Wang Lu (pseudonym) recalled his live broadcast experience to the reporter.
At that time, Wang Lu had been working continuously for nearly 14 hours.
The cameraman started to pack the equipment. The boss came up from the side, patted him on the shoulder, and said to everyone, "Thank you today. You can rest a little longer and come back to the company at 11 noon."
Wang Lu, 25 years old this year, joined an e-commerce company in September 2019 and became an e-commerce anchor.
When the company signed the contract with him, it was clearly required to ensure 3 to 4 days of live broadcast every week, from 6pm to 12pm.
But this is not all Wang Lu's working hours.
In fact, in the days when there is a live broadcast, Wang Lu needs to arrive at the company around 10 am, and then prepare to select products, walk through the scenes, and recite lines.
"Full-time anchors generally have to live broadcast for 6 hours a day. Some anchors complete the live broadcast at one time, and some broadcast the live broadcast twice. I choose the latter and live broadcast for 3 hours each time."
On days when there is no live broadcast, he is not allowed to be free. Instead, he has to switch to operations or customer service. "Basically, he can only take one day off a week."
"If you are approaching large shopping festivals such as'Double 11' and '6.18', the anchor may only have one day off a month, or even no holiday in a month. Because the competition for e-commerce anchors is very fierce, you do not broadcast data such as popularity It will be affected immediately." Wang Lu said.
For better development, in February of this year, Wang Lu resigned from the e-commerce platform, signed a contract with an internet celebrity brokerage company, and started self-media operations-in his words, he jumped from one "pit" to another. ".
Competition in the self-media industry is also fierce.
Wang Lu took over a life science short video account. He was responsible for writing the script for shooting short videos and coordinating the details of the shooting. After the video was released, he was also responsible for promoting and interacting with fans.
During the operation of Wanglu, the account gained nearly 400,000 followers, and the short video with the most fan interactions reached 320,000 likes.
At this time, the Internet celebrity brokerage company also asked Wang Lu to transform the e-commerce live broadcast to bring the goods.
"In addition to the 8 hours of live broadcast every day, I also consider the work of taking videos for self-media. It's a painful life every day." Wang Lu said.
In June of this year, Wang Lu resigned from an Internet celebrity brokerage company and went to work for an Internet company in Hangzhou alone.
Speaking of the reasons for resignation, Wang Lu said that on the one hand, the work pressure is too great. The live broadcast job requires the anchor to maintain a state of excitement in front of the camera. It needs to be maintained for 6 to 8 hours a day, which is quite heavy for the body. Burden; on the other hand, this kind of long work affects his normal life and makes him have no time to participate in social activities.
Monthly income of 0.3 yuan per order is 3,000 yuan
The courier has no time to be with his family
Wang Lu is not the only one who works in the new business for long hours and with high intensity.
Mr. Sun, 44, has been working in express delivery in Yuncheng, Shanxi for more than 5 years.
The day of the interview was a Sunday, and he still got up at 8 in the morning, and then rushed to the site to devote himself to his busy work.
"I go to work at around 9 in the morning, almost the whole day without stopping. I don't get home until around 10 in the evening. I can't rest for a few days throughout the year." Mr. Sun said, "The express delivery business basically uses this schedule. ."
Why do you work so long every day?
"On the one hand, it is because the company has assessment requirements for the number of dispatched parts; on the other hand, once the dispatched parts are overdue, if someone complains, they will lose a lot of money." Mr. Sun said that he was most afraid of hearing the word "complaint". "A single complaint is nothing a day."
Because Mr. Sun’s location is famous for special products such as fruits and twists, and in recent years, more and more farmers have started to do e-commerce. Helping to mail boxes of special products has become an important part of Mr. Sun’s work.
The boxes of specialty products are not light in weight, and the frequent movements of bending over to carry boxes and loading vehicles also caused him to suffer from "occupational diseases" such as lumbar disc herniation and cervical spondylopathy.
Although the doctor urged him to be treated as soon as possible, in Mr. Sun's view, his job does not allow him to treat the disease-he is alone at the site.
He spends most of his time at work every day, unable to accompany his family, making Mr. Sun feel helpless: "My wife and children have complained. I can't go home if there is something at home, and I can't even spare time for a meal with friends."
Is it okay not to do this job?
Mr. Sun said that the express company he worked for did not provide social insurance. All his income was accumulated from 0.3 yuan per order. Currently, his monthly income is around 3,000 yuan.
And as he got older, he couldn't do other jobs.
Xiao Li is 28 years old and registered as a rider on a food delivery platform in Tianjin 4 months ago.
In his opinion, he spends almost all his waking time on delivering food: system dispatch orders, go to the store to pick up meals, and deliver them to customers on time.
After becoming a takeaway, he arranged for himself to work every day from 9:30 am to 12 pm, with a half-hour break at noon and afternoon.
"Because the workload is directly linked to income: you can get 8 yuan for every order you complete. Make sure that you receive 40 to 50 orders a day so that the income can pass. In general, there are fewer riders running takeaways after 10 pm, and there are more orders for supper. The competition is not as fierce as during the day." Xiao Li said.
At work, Xiao Li is most afraid of encountering customers who do not answer the phone.
Once, he encountered a restaurant that was slow to serve meals, and at the same time, he was sent other orders by the platform. He finally got the meal, but he couldn't contact the customers when he arrived at the place. Seeing the time passing by, he was anxious. Ants on hot pan.
Finally, the two orders were deducted 20 yuan for overtime.
"I really wanted to cry." Xiao Li said.
As a full-time online ride-hailing driver, Zheng Le received 50 orders in the most one day. According to the platform regulations, each order was commissioned at a rate of 20%.
Zheng Le earns an average of about 20,000 yuan a month, and after deducting the cost of renting a car, he gets a little more than 10,000 yuan.
There are two children in his family, one just went to elementary school and the other was born last year.
According to Zheng Le, he knows many of his colleagues. After the exchanges, they found that everyone’s schedule is very similar: they are ready to take orders at 8 o’clock every morning, because this is the peak time for work and there are a lot of orders. After that, they have kept ordering sports cars. The rhythm of the night until seven or eight o'clock in the evening to catch up with the evening rush hour.
After that, some people will choose to end the day's work, but more people will continue to work for two or three hours in order to make more money.
"There is no way, if you want to make money, you have to spend more time running more orders."
Unclear boundaries between work and rest
Innovative system to balance work and rest
The "State Council Regulations on Working Hours of Employees" clarifies that employees work 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week.
According to the provisions of the labor law, if the working hours need to be extended due to special reasons, the extended working hours shall not exceed 3 hours per day, but shall not exceed 36 hours per month under the conditions of ensuring the health of the workers.
Shen Jianfeng, Dean of the Law School of the China Institute of Labor Relations, told reporters that it is a common phenomenon for employees of new business types to work overtime.
Excessive working hours will cause workers to overwork, and long-term overwork will bring physical damage. “Working for too long can easily lead to workers becoming a working machine”.
“Overtime work affects the employees’ right to rest and disrupts the balance between work and life. The traditional working hour system for employment is the benchmark and guarantee for balancing life and work, and new forms of employment should not abandon this system goal.” Central University of Finance and Economics Associate Professor Li Haiming said.
In Shen Jianfeng's view, the overtime work of employees in new business types has its industrial development reasons as well as institutional and technical reasons.
He explained that practitioners in new business types mostly work through platforms, and their online time is relatively flexible. It is difficult to calculate their working hours based on the existing rules for calculating working hours on time to and from get off work, and special system design is required.
In addition, the calculation of working hours also involves the issue of wage standards, which will further increase the difficulty of system design.
"The new business format and traditional factory employment are obviously different in work location and process control. The boundary between work and rest for employees in the new business format is not clear." Li Haiming said, the time boundary between the two is not clear, waiting The time of taking orders is the intermediate state between work and rest; the space boundary is not clear, and the working place is open.
The overtime work of employees in the new business format still needs to be regulated by the new system, and it is not appropriate to simply copy the traditional working hour system.
"In the long run, standardizing platform algorithms and labor quota management rules is a necessary direction to solve overtime work. In addition, it is also necessary to form a common bottom linear competition rule within the industry." Shen Jianfeng said that platform algorithms and labor quotas should be established as soon as possible. Such systems for reasonable control can adopt the model of national labor standards, the model of algorithms and the review of the ethics committee, or the model similar to collective negotiation, or a combination of these can be applied.
Li Haiming suggested limiting overtime work and guaranteeing the right to rest from the perspective of standardizing platforms and implementing platform responsibilities.
For example, from the perspective of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, prohibiting low-price competition between platforms, and restricting unsustainable subsidies that platforms use to exclude rivals; from the perspective of the Trade Union Law, developing trade unions and regional trade unions to work for new forms of business The rest and well-being of personnel provides a socialized service mechanism; from the perspective of labor law, platform control and corporate rules and regulations should be included in the scope of labor law, so as to achieve non-discriminatory protection for workers in new forms of business.
"Setting working hours standards, prohibiting vicious competition, and increasing labor income per unit of time are the keys to achieving a balance between work and rest, and ensuring the right to rest for employees in the new business." Li Haiming said that the government and labor unions should be employees of the new business. Provide public facilities and convenience for rest breaks; platforms and companies should provide humane design for the work process of practitioners in new business formats, instead of over-limiting pressure on the basis of actuarial calculations.
"There is an urgent need to protect the rest rights and health of employees in the new business in the form of law. It should gradually follow the traditional labor security system, and gradually implement the medical examination system, training system, rest and vacation system and remuneration benchmark system for employees in the new business. "Li Haiming said.