How to protect the rights and interests of workers in new formats
Motivation for investigation
Recently, a 22-year-old girl Xu Moumou died of a sudden illness due to continuous overtime working in a live broadcast operation in Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province. Related news rushed to the hot search, arousing widespread public attention to the rights and interests of workers in the new format.
With the rapid development of the Internet platform economy, there are more and more workers in new forms of employment relying on the Internet platform, such as anchors, chauffeurs, car-hailing drivers, and food delivery workers.
What is their current living condition and working environment, and are their rights and interests guaranteed?
Around these issues, the "Rules of Law Daily" reporter conducted an in-depth investigation.
□ Our reporter Chen Lei
□ Zhou Yubu, an intern of this newspaper
The live broadcast will start at 17:00, and it will be broadcast at 24:00; the next day from 6:00 to 9:00, another live broadcast will be added; the short video and live broadcast will begin at 12:00 on the same day, and it will be broadcast until 21:00.
After nearly a day and a night of live broadcast work, Li Tingting (pseudonym), 22 years old this year, who has just started working for half a year, sighed: "It's good to live."
Li Tingting graduated from a college in Zhejiang Province, majoring in broadcasting and hosting.
At the beginning of this year, by chance, she entered the live broadcast industry, and her work included video shooting, product selection, broadcast, review, etc. It was the norm to stay up late and work overtime. , if you don’t do it, you will have no income.”
With the rapid development of the Internet platform economy, more and more people like Li Tingting rely on the Internet platform for employment, such as anchors, chauffeurs, car-hailing drivers, food deliverymen, etc. They are called "new business workers" .
Recently, a reporter from the "Rules of Law Daily" visited a number of new-type workers and found that most of the interviewees worked more than 10 hours a day.
According to public information, "work-to-death" incidents for workers in new formats have occurred from time to time.
A number of experts interviewed by reporters believed that with the release of the "Guiding Opinions on Safeguarding Labor Security Rights and Interests of New Employment Forms" (hereinafter referred to as "Guiding Opinions"), new forms of labor with labor relations and incomplete labor relations will be released. In the future, it is urgent to establish a working hour system in line with the digital age under this policy framework.
The interviewed experts suggested that classification governance based on whether or not there is a labor relationship is the basic direction. Quantitative computing problems for online and offline work for multiple platforms.
At the same time, speed up the formulation of the Labor Standards Law and establish a mandatory working hours limit system.
More importantly, establish a mechanism for reasonable growth of labor remuneration for workers in new formats as soon as possible, and gradually increase the level of labor remuneration.
Working overtime and staying up late is more common
Meet the big promotion live all day
Li Tingting's daily job is to sell women's clothing live.
The daily live broadcast time is as little as 4 hours and as much as 10 hours.
Before the live broadcast, a short video of related products needs to be shot. Each shooting takes three or four hours. The short video is played during the live broadcast to attract traffic.
She usually starts the live broadcast in the afternoon, resumes the live broadcast after the broadcast, and selects the next day's products at the same time, and it is already two or three o'clock the next day when she gets home.
In mid-July, Li Tingting experienced a live broadcast for nearly a day and a night.
That day, the company arranged for her to live broadcast for 7 hours, and it was broadcast at 12 o'clock at night, and it was 2 o'clock in the morning when she got home.
Just got home, the company's colleague in charge of scheduling sent a message to her, informing her to add a live broadcast from 6:00 to 9:00 in the morning.
Considering that the time was too tight, she planned to refuse, but the other party said that she couldn't arrange it, so she had to agree.
In order to save time, she did not remove makeup or sleep, and waited until 5 o'clock in the morning to rush to the company to live broadcast with makeup on.
The live broadcast in the morning ended, and after an hour’s rest, she started filming the video at 12:00 that day and continued until the afternoon, followed by a 10-hour live broadcast.
"My ankle was injured and my heart was not very good. Standing for a long time in the live broadcast challenged my physical limit. By 9 o'clock in the evening, I was already confused and my body was not listening. It was all my colleagues who were on the same class to complete the live broadcast." The end of the live broadcast that day Afterwards, Li Tingting went home without waiting for the review.
Not long ago, after Xu Moumou, a 22-year-old girl who was working in a live broadcast operation in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, died of a sudden illness due to continuous overtime work, Li Tingting received messages from many friends, asking her to pay attention to her body.
But she understands that working in live broadcasts definitely requires staying up late and working overtime, because the time when consumers can watch live broadcasts is mostly at night; in addition, one of her company's compensation criteria for anchors is the live broadcast time.
Li Tingting's experience is not an exception.
Some live broadcast practitioners said: "After introducing the last product and turning off the live broadcast, the time has passed zero, and I am tired and paralyzed on the chair."
Many live broadcast practitioners interviewed by the reporter said that they work more than 10 hours a day, and it is common to work overtime and stay up late. 24 hours non-stop live broadcast.
This kind of work status makes them often feel overwhelmed, and some practitioners even think about it and prepare to quit the live broadcast industry.
Execution needs to be strengthened
Lack of working hours for new formats
In addition to practitioners in the live broadcast industry, other new business practitioners are also in a state of long working hours and high labor intensity.
Zheng Le (pseudonym), 39, drives an online car-hailing service in Beijing and has many years of experience.
His original idea of choosing to drive an online car-hailing service was simple, "free time and earn more money".
However, when he really entered the industry, he found that he was wrong. "Basically, he leaves the car at 8:30 in the morning, and he can only go home and rest around 12:00 in the evening. As long as he opens his eyes, he is working."
As an online car-hailing driver, Zheng Le has received 50 orders a day at most. According to the platform regulations, each platform takes a 20% commission.
He earns an average of about 20,000 yuan a month, and he gets more than 10,000 yuan after deducting car rental and other expenses.
Zheng Le communicated with other online car-hailing drivers and found that everyone's schedule is very similar: prepare to take orders at 8:00 every morning, and then maintain the rhythm of taking orders for sports cars until 7:00 or 8:00 in the evening to catch orders during the evening peak.
After that, a few drivers chose to end their day, but most continued to work for two or three hours.
"There is no way. If you want to make money, you can only spend more time running more orders." Zheng Le said.
Chen Lankai (pseudonym), who is in his 40s this year, has been engaged in full-time chauffeur service in Beijing since 2017.
He usually takes orders online around 5:00 p.m. The peak period for taking orders is from 10:00 p.m. to 12:00 p.m., and then he works one after another until he goes home to rest at four or five in the morning the next day. If you need to go, the guests will be called to drive after drinking in the evening, and I will send the guests home safely. If you want to make more money, you must take more orders.”
Behind Li Tingting, Zheng Le, Chen Lankai and others are tens of millions of workers in new forms of employment who rely on Internet platforms.
For them, working more than 10 hours a day and staying up late has become the norm.
"With the rapid development of the platform economy, the number of workers in new formats has increased significantly. This group generally has problems of long working hours and high work intensity. Laborers who are in this high-intensity work mode for a long time will definitely lead to excessive physical load. It brings huge challenges and impacts to physical and mental health," said Yang Baoquan, senior partner of Beijing Zhongyin Law Firm.
According to Shen Jianfeng, Dean of the Law School of China Institute of Labor Relations, workers in new formats mostly work through platforms, etc., and their online hours are more flexible. It is difficult to calculate their working hours through the existing working hours calculation rules for commuting to get off work on time. Carry out special system design.
In addition, the calculation of working hours also involves the issue of wage standards, which will further increase the difficulty of system design.
Wang Tianyu, deputy director of the Social Law Office of the Institute of Law of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that many new types of laborers work overtime Labor laws and regulations, labor laws and regulations have clearly stipulated the working hour system; but in practice, the enforcement of labor laws is not enough, and there is no strong enforcement means for such violations of labor laws.
"For workers without labor relations, such as online car-hailing drivers, chauffeurs, etc., they can independently decide whether to work, when to work, and where to work; they obtain income through the platform and form an economic affiliation with the platform. And because of 'platform points', they must be subject to platform rules. Regarding their working hour system, my country has not yet built a legal system that is compatible with the new format." Wang Tianyu said.
Establish a working hour account system
Increase the unit price of metering tasks
In July 2021, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and other departments jointly issued the "Guiding Opinions", proposing that for workers in the new employment form, if the conditions for establishing labor relations are met, enterprises should conclude labor contracts with workers in accordance with the law.
If it does not fully meet the conditions for establishing a labor relationship but the enterprise conducts labor management on the laborers, the enterprise shall be instructed to enter into a written agreement with the laborers, and the rights and obligations of the enterprise and the laborers shall be reasonably determined.
The interviewed experts agreed that with the release of the "Guiding Opinions", it has been clarified in terms of social policy to include new-type workers with labor relations and incomplete labor relations into the scope of legal protection.
However, under the framework of the "Guiding Opinions", it is also necessary to classify and implement policies based on whether workers of new formats have established labor relations with relevant enterprises.
In Shen Jianfeng's view, the issues that need to be further resolved in the future are which labor law rules can be applied to incomplete workers, and how the existing labor law system can adapt to the employment model in the digital age.
Wang Tianyu's point of view is to improve labor laws, establish a bottom line for the total number of working hours, and at the same time establish a working time allocation system that adapts to the flexibility of work in the Internet age.
“Labor law can consider setting a monthly or quarterly overtime cap to replace the existing weekly overtime cap, and may appropriately increase the overtime cap under the premise of enumerating special circumstances, in order to adapt to the trend of flexible work in the digital age. Wang Tianyu said that to match it, the legal responsibility for violating the working hours benchmark should be greatly increased, so that the labor law has the force of enforcement.
For situations that do not fully meet the conditions for establishing labor relations, but the company conducts labor management on employees, the interviewed experts suggested that the shortcomings of laws, regulations and norms should be filled as soon as possible.
"On the normative level, laws, regulations and rules should further regulate unreasonable working hours and unreasonable employment patterns, especially the introduction of some regulations to regulate the employment patterns of flexible employment groups." Yang Baoquan said.
Shen Jianfeng proposed that in terms of working hours, as an important system for calculating workload and balancing workers' work and life, it should be applied to platform workers.
The problem here is that the working hours of platform workers are determined by going online and offline, which is often in an uncertain state, and sometimes the online and actual work are not synchronized. These all mean that the working hour system design of platform employment cannot be carried out through traditional working hour calculation methods.
"In the future, we can consider introducing a working hour account system for platform workers to solve the problem of overwork caused by going offline at any time and working on multiple platforms. Of course, social and economic development and changes in workers' attitudes are more fundamental for the implementation of this system. conditions." Shen Jianfeng said.
In Wang Tianyu's view, it is necessary to explore task-measured labor benchmarks based on economic subordination, control the unit price, continuity and total amount of tasks undertaken, establish algorithms for informed and collective consent rules, and adopt an "independent special chapter" system in labor benchmark legislation. Build a path.
"A task-measured labor benchmark system can be established. Under the premise that the total length of flexible employment cannot be directly controlled by practitioners, large-scale platforms can limit labor opportunities through task continuity and total control to prevent overwork. Determine labor through certain procedures. After the unit price of the worker's task is publicized, it is convenient for the practitioner to calculate the daily working hours to achieve the expected income target, so as to maintain the average working time of the industry in a reasonable range as a whole. At the same time, the unit price of the worker's measurement task must be calculated. Adjusting upwards, when the unit price of laborers' tasks increases and the overall remuneration increases simultaneously, the working hours of laborers will be shortened." Wang Tianyu said.
External supervision is also essential.
Yang Baoquan believes that the rights and interests of practitioners depend on protection from all aspects.
In terms of law enforcement, relevant government departments should shoulder the responsibility of supervision and management, formulate supervision mechanisms of different levels and intensities for different industries, strengthen early warning mechanisms, and formulate regular and irregular inspection mechanisms.
We will promptly investigate and punish platform companies that infringe upon the legitimate rights and interests of workers in new formats, and publicize serious violations.
Yang Baoquan suggested that relevant departments should take active actions to protect the rights and interests of workers in new formats from all aspects.
For example, the administrative departments of human resources and social security at all levels should increase labor security supervision, urge enterprises to implement the responsibility for protecting the rights and interests of workers in the new employment form, strengthen the management of outstanding problems such as arrears of labor remuneration, illegal overtime and overtime, and protect the rights and interests of workers in accordance with the law.
"All departments and units must conscientiously perform their duties, strengthen work coordination, incorporate the protection of workers' rights into the digital economy collaborative governance system, establish a reporting system for the employment of platform companies, improve the joint incentive and punishment mechanism for the protection of workers' rights and interests, and improve relevant policies, measures and judicial Explain." Yang Baoquan told reporters.