Expert advice for new business practitioners facing the platform's deep labor rights predicament
Strengthen labor protection barriers in accordance with the law
□ Our reporter Chen Lei
They deliver food to others every day through wind and rain, but most people do not have the "five insurances and one housing fund". If they encounter an accident, they rely only on commercial insurance as protection.
Their identity is the delivery staff.
According to the "Report on China's Sharing Economy Development (2020)" issued by the National Information Center's Sharing Economy Research Center, the number of participants in the sharing economy is about 800 million, of which about 78 million are service providers, and takeaway delivery personnel are one of them. .
Flexible employment patterns have brought workers a free working mode, but their lack of labor rights protection has always been with them.
On December 15, Beijing Yilian Labor Law Aid and Research Center and other institutions issued the "Protection of Labor Rights and Interests of Practitioners in New Business Types-Survey Report on Occupational Injuries of Online Delivery Operators in Beijing (2020)" (hereinafter referred to as "Investigation Report") Compared with income, takeaway delivery staff are more dissatisfied with the occupational safety guarantee of delivery work.
The interviewed experts believe that this group of labor rights protection faces multiple difficulties.
On the one hand, it is difficult to realize basic labor rights such as arrears of wages and long working hours; on the other hand, due to the binding of social insurance for employees in our country to labor relations, their occupational injuries cannot be resolved through the national social security system.
Large number of employees
Lack of labor rights protection
Chen from Henan joined the ranks of takeaway delivery staff as early as 2012.
According to him, at that time, compared with the wages on construction sites, which were usually paid once a year, the wages of food delivery staff were relatively easy to get.
Moreover, a certain takeaway platform that has just started has better treatment in all aspects than it is now. "When we started, we had'five social insurance and one housing fund' and many other subsidies."
Over time, his relationship with a food delivery platform is changing.
Before entering the job, he had to sign a labor contract. Now he has worked at a distribution station for more than two years and has not signed a labor contract. "If you want to work here, just sign and collect the money. What I consider every day is the punctuality rate, bad reviews, and pick-up. It’s useless if I don’t think about anything else.”
Chen is now nominally affiliated with a labor service company. In the past few years, he has changed many labor service companies, and the "five insurances and one housing fund" are gone. The only protection against accidents and dangers is to deduct from income every month Commercial insurance purchased for more than 100 yuan.
According to his observations, most of the surrounding takeaway delivery staff belong to different labor service companies, and some do not belong to any labor service company. They can run orders by registering on the app on the food delivery platform.
According to the "incentive" mechanism of the platform where Chen is located, if the delivery staff is full attendance every month and the punctuality rate reaches a certain percentage, each order will receive a bonus of 0.2 yuan.
In Chen's view, under such an "incentive" mechanism, it is inevitable for them to go retrograde, run red lights, and have traffic accidents.
However, the platform's judgment on overtime delivery is strict and will not be relaxed for special reasons.
Compared with overtime delivery of meals, the bad reviews given by customers made Chen "meat hurt" and deducted 50 yuan or 100 yuan at every turn.
This year, he earns more than 6000 yuan a month.
For this job that lacks occupational safety protection, Chen does not plan to keep doing it. "This industry is not easy to do right now."
Chen's employment method is called "new employment form" in our country.
According to Huang Leping, vice chairman of the Work Injury Insurance Special Committee of the China Medical Insurance Research Association and director of the Beijing Yilian Labor Law Aid and Research Center, while the sharing economy has become a new driving force for economic development, it has also created "new employment patterns" and A large-scale team of practitioners in new business formats.
Huang Leping said in an interview with a reporter from the Rule of Law Daily that the "new employment form" is a special form of flexible employment.
Flexible employment patterns bring free work patterns to workers, such as flexible work arrangements and more job opportunities, but their lack of labor rights protection is worthy of attention.
Takeaway delivery becomes the main business
Lack of occupational safety
According to the survey sample statistics, in the group of food delivery staff, from the perspective of gender ratio, male delivery delivery staff accounted for 96.85% of the total sample, and female delivery delivery staff accounted for 3.15%.
According to analysis by Hao Zhengxin, a researcher at the Beijing Yilian Labor Law Aid and Research Center, the small proportion of women is due to the work characteristics of food delivery-high-intensity physical exertion and long working hours.
In the "Survey Report", more than 95% of takeaway delivery staff work more than 8 hours a day, of which 38.8% work from 11 to 12 hours a day, and 28.08% work more than 12 hours.
In an interview with a reporter from the Rule of Law Daily, Hao Zhengxin said that compared with last year’s survey data, it can be found that the labor hours of takeaway delivery staff have continued to increase. Among them, more than 60% (30% last year) of takeaway delivery staff work more than 11 hours a day .
The labor intensity of the delivery staff is also reflected in the number of orders delivered each month.
Statistics show that more than 40% of takeaway couriers deliver more than 800 orders per month.
In Hao Zhengxin's view, the number of delivery orders is an important indicator of the workload of the delivery staff, and most of the delivery staff face high-intensity work pressure.
Behind the increase in working hours and the high volume of delivery orders, the platform unilaterally lowered the unit price, resulting in "takeaway riders" being forced to extend their working hours to maintain income.
According to the "Investigation Report", from the perspective of age, the proportion of take-out delivery staff under the age of 45 to 95.6% of all delivery staff.
"On the whole, the group of takeaway delivery staff is dominated by young people. The age group from 1985 to 1995 is the main body of takeaway delivery staff, and the post-95s and post-00s are also joining the army of food delivery staff."
Hao Zhengxin specifically mentioned in the release of the "Investigation Report" that in this group, 54.89% of the takeaway delivery staff use the special delivery mode, and 43.85% of the takeout delivery staff use the crowdsourcing mode.
89.6% of takeaway delivery staff said that their current takeaway delivery work is the only source of income.
"The vast majority of people in the group of takeaway delivery staff take takeaway delivery as their main occupation." Hao Zhengxin said.
What does not match this is that 60.3% of the takeaway delivery staff chose “the risk of traffic accidents is high” among the occupational difficult choices they were asked about, thinking that this is their professional risk.
According to the "Survey Report", comparing the satisfaction of the delivery staff with income and occupational safety, 23% of the delivery staff are "relatively dissatisfied" or "completely dissatisfied" with the income, but 30% of the delivery staff They are "relatively dissatisfied" or "completely dissatisfied" with the occupational safety guarantee of the distribution work.
"Compared with income, takeaway delivery staff are more dissatisfied with the occupational safety of delivery work." Hao Zhengxin said.
Flexible use of policy tools
Establish a negotiation and negotiation system
In our country, the Social Insurance Law, related administrative regulations, and departmental regulations have built a social insurance system for workers with pension insurance, medical insurance, work-related injury insurance, unemployment insurance and maternity insurance as the basic framework.
However, as far as the work injury insurance system is concerned, employees can only enjoy work injury insurance benefits if they form a labor relationship with a specific employer.
The "Investigation Report" stated that in practice, once a takeaway delivery person encounters a traffic accident and other occupational injuries, when the problem is resolved through judicial channels, the confirmation of labor relations becomes the "first hurdle" on the road to rights protection.
"Because the social insurance of Chinese employees is tied to labor relations, their occupational injuries cannot be resolved through the national social security system." Huang Leping said.
In Huang Leping’s view, facing the “new employment pattern” dominated by flexible employees, it is urgent to get rid of the concept of binding labor relations and work-related injury insurance, and timely revise the Social Insurance Law and the "Work-related Injury Insurance Regulations" to expand the scope of work-related injury insurance. , To include them in the work injury insurance system.
Huang Leping suggested: “Establish a government-led special work injury insurance (occupational injury insurance), with reference to the principle of fixed income for work injury insurance, and implement independent accounting. Special work injury insurance (occupational injury insurance) is not linked to labor relations, let alone Labor relations are the prerequisite."
It is worth noting that in August 2019, with the approval of the State Council, the General Office of the State Council issued the "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Standardized and Healthy Development of Platform Economy". According to this, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security is responsible for Flexible employment and other social security policies for employees, and pilot occupational injury protection."
In this year's No. 1 Central Document ("Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Doing a Good Job in the "Three Rural" Areas to Ensure an All-round Well-off Society on Schedule"), the central government clearly stated that "a pilot project of occupational injury protection for employees in new business types should be launched."
Wang Tianyu, an associate researcher at the Institute of Law of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the reporter of the Rule of Law Daily that the new formulation here is very worthy of attention. With the changes in labor and working methods, it can be predicted to establish a work-related injury insurance system that is different from the current work injury insurance system. A national occupational injury protection system will be a necessity.
In Wang Tianyu's view, employees of new business types have strong labor autonomy, which is different from traditional labor relations, which must have subordination characteristics. Therefore, they are not covered by the current work injury insurance and cannot be included in the current work injury insurance system to solve their occupational injury risks.
Wang Tianyu advocated that on the road to labor protection for employees in the new business, “we should not only emphasize labor law, but should adopt a multi-pronged approach from policy, legal, organizational, and academic perspectives, and flexibly use various policy tools to help migrant workers strengthen their bargaining power. Starting from the most prominent issues of delivery time, remuneration, rewards and punishments, and safety guarantees, it aims to build a bottom line for the protection of rights and interests. We can learn from the practice of the tripartite mechanism of labor relations and establish a bargaining and negotiation system with the participation of the'government-union-platform' tripartite. Use public power to check and balance the decision-making power of the platform, provide a bargaining channel for takeaway riders, and modify the platform's algorithm with the results of tripartite bargaining."
Wang Tianyu suggested that when exploring a new type of occupational injury protection system, first of all, it is necessary to distinguish the occupational risks of different employment forms, to implement classified policies, to clarify the boundaries of specific occupational risks, and not to include all injuries; secondly, not to abstract legislation, let alone to The occupational injury protection system serves as a general protection for all types of labor in the society; thirdly, a platform classification registration and industry access system shall be established; finally, the platform and practitioners shall pay together, and the payment rate shall be determined according to the industry classification.