"Shared Programmer", "Shared Designer", ...... Is shared employees "outsourcing" in disguise?

Labor dispatch is one of the existing employment methods clearly stipulated in the mainland law, and in "outsourcing" and "labor dispatch", the unit that establishes a labor relationship with the employee (i.e., the labor dispatch unit) needs to obtain an administrative license from the local human resources and social security administrative department with licensing jurisdiction. Without permission, no unit or individual may operate labor dispatch business. At present, the current laws and regulations in mainland China do not make special provisions or require the enterprises involved in sharing employees to obtain specific qualifications, and only require all parties to reach a consensus through consultation.

In this year's spring recruitment market, the term "shared employees" became popular. According to media reports, these "shared employees" generally do not sign fixed contracts with companies, but rather cooperate with companies on a certain project for a short period of time. Because it helps to save labor costs and solve problems such as labor difficulties, "shared programmers" and "shared designers" have become popular choices for enterprise recruitment.

However, some employees believe that "shared employees" are disguised "labor dispatch" and "outsourcing", which has legal loopholes and is prone to labor disputes. What are the pros and cons of the "shared employee" model? What are the current characteristics? How to develop healthily? In this regard, Nandu reporters interviewed employees, enterprises, lawyers, and experts in many ways.

Q&A

Q: What is the difference between the "shared employee" model and "labor dispatch" and "outsourcing"?

A: Qu Meifang (lawyer of Guangdong Guozhi Law Firm): "Shared employees" and "labor dispatch" have something in common, that is, the separation of the employer and the actual employer, but there are also big differences between the two.

"Shared employees" are extended to technology-intensive positions

The "shared employee" model is not new. As early as 2020, "shared employees" have been applied in service industries such as catering, hotels, retail, and logistics, and have become an emergency plan for enterprises to jointly save themselves during the epidemic. In 2020, the flexible employment service platform Part-time Cat launched the "Shared Employees" program, and successfully deployed more than 4,000 employees to more than 90 enterprises in just one month, alleviating the contradiction between idle personnel and labor shortage under the epidemic.

At that time, shared employment was an effective way for enterprises to cooperate in the adjustment of labor surplus and shortage, and it was a cooperative employment model in which the "surplus employee enterprise" and the labor contract workers reached a consensus to transfer the workers to the "labor shortage enterprises" within a certain period of time, without changing the labor relations between the "employee surplus enterprises" and the workers.

"The traditional employment model is intensifying the transformation, and the flexible employment group has gradually covered the jobs in the middle and high-level white-collar fields from the original basic service personnel. The person in charge of the part-time cat said that the human resources market is gradually changing from complete talent delivery to skill delivery, so the demand for flexible employment is increasing sharply. Today, the "shared staff" model has gradually expanded to include editors, designers, copywriters, and other fields, and the service methods are more flexible.

For the term "shared employees", Guangzhou white-collar guards are no strangers. Wei Wei works for a travel company, which has suffered a downturn in the industry, and his job is basically in a state of "suspension", relying on "shared employees" to maintain daily living expenses. At present, there are several companies she serves, basically copywriting and editing jobs, and there are two or three more fixed ones. In Weiwei's view, the "shared employee" model has provided her with more job opportunities and income, and her working hours and locations have become more flexible. At its peak, the income from "being shared" accounted for nearly half of her work income.

For enterprises, hiring "shared employees" can reduce rigid labor costs, site rental costs and other management costs, so it is also favored. The person in charge of a medical aesthetic institution in Zhujiang New Town said that the company's current graphic design is "shared employees". "We are a start-up, and at this stage, we focus on protecting the core positions of beauticians and plastic surgeons, but we also need to do the promotion work, and the daily material design can reduce a lot of costs by using 'shared employees'. ”

Lu Jingliang, an associate professor at the Institute of Economics and Social Research at Jinan University, pointed out that the emergence of the "shared staff" model was initially to solve the problems of "idleness" and "labor shortage", and then gradually developed into a flexible employment model. He pointed out that the "shared employee" employment model breaks through the previous mainstream model of third-party human resources organization as an allocation intermediary, and its core feature is that employees no longer sign long-term full-time or part-time contracts with a single enterprise, but cooperate with enterprises on short-term and flexible projects by employees themselves or through third-party platforms. "In this model, the employee-company relationship is more akin to a partnership than a traditional employment relationship. ”

"Regarding the 'shared staff' model, many domestic companies have tried it first. This model has also gradually expanded from labor-intensive positions such as assembly line workers and catering service personnel to technology-intensive positions such as programmers and designers. Lu Jingliang said that compared with the "shared employee" model during the epidemic, the current "shared employee" group is more dependent on the Internet and online office, and is more and more biased towards high-skilled employees.

There is no clear legal provision on the rights and obligations of "shared employees".

"Sharing" for many years, Weiwei has also noticed some disadvantages of "sharing employees". "Shared employees" are usually called up by employers only when needed, so their income is often less stable than that of regular employees. Since most of the cooperation is a short-term project, it is difficult to get in touch with the core business and enjoy the benefits of regular employees. "In addition to being unstable, 'shared employees' are more like items that the company 'calls and lingers', and it is difficult to feel a sense of belonging when they are outside the organization for a long time. Wei Wei said.

The "shared employee" model has sparked heated discussions on the Internet. Many people are concerned about issues such as "how to pay the wages, benefits, and social security of shared employees" and "what to do if there is a work-related injury".

Some industry insiders said that the reason why the "shared employee" model is hot is mainly because enterprises can save the cost of social security and income tax through "shared employees". "Enterprises do not need to sign a fixed labor contract with employees, which can very cleverly avoid the problem of social security payment, and some enterprises can save personal income tax by paying wages to 'shared employees' in cash or by transfer. The person said.

Qu Meifang, a lawyer at Guangdong Guozhi Law Firm, told reporters that up to now, there is no legal provision to clarify the definition of the "shared employee" model and related rights and obligations, which can be referred to the departmental normative document "Notice on Doing a Good Job in Shared Employment Guidance and Services" (hereinafter referred to as the "Notice") issued by the General Office of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security in September 2020 and some local normative documents.

According to the Circular, if the original enterprise of shared employment and the worker reach an agreement through consultation to arrange the worker to work in the enterprise lacking labor, the labor relationship between the original enterprise and the worker shall not be changed, and the labor remuneration shall be settled by the enterprise lacking labor to the original enterprise, and then the original enterprise shall pay the worker on time and in full, and pay social insurance premiums for the worker. If a worker suffers a work-related accident while working in an enterprise lacking labor, the original enterprise shall bear the liability for work-related injury insurance, and the compensation method may be agreed with the enterprise lacking labor. However, there is no corresponding provision in the Circular for the time being for the time being when an employee goes to work in another unit on his own without being arranged by his employer.

"Since 'shared employees' belong to the scope of free negotiation between enterprises and employees, and there are no specific licensing requirements for sharing enterprises, there may be problems such as information asymmetry and lack of laws and regulations to restrain them, resulting in problems such as unclear rights and responsibilities and no guidelines for dispute resolution. Qu Meifang said that at present, under the "shared employee" model, both the legitimate rights and interests of employees and the employment risks of enterprises are not clear.

"Sharing" makes the labor market more involuted?

"There are not enough jobs in the first place, isn't it more volatile?" "Naked exploitation, and the beautiful name of 'sharing'. "In essence, it's better to outsource, and it's just squeezing to the extreme. ”...... Some netizens believe that "shared employees" are "temporary workers" and "labor dispatch" in disguise. In the future, if enterprises hire lower-cost "shared employees", it may exacerbate the "involution" of the labor market.

"The 'shared employee' model does pose certain challenges to employees' career stability, but it also motivates employees to continuously improve their skills and enhance their competitiveness. For the "shared employees" will make the labor market more and more "involuted", Lu Jingliang believes that at present, the "shared" employment model is only a useful supplement to the conventional employment model, as long as it is correctly regulated and guided, it will bring a benign impact on economic benefits and the general society. "It is an automatic match between supply and demand in the labor market, which effectively increases the labor force participation rate, enhances the employment flexibility, and provides more work opportunities for freelancers, as well as more free and flexible working methods for the majority of workers. ”

In the view of Luo Mingzhong, dean of the School of Economics and Management of South China Agricultural University, with the support of new technology, the sharing economy is wide, and sharing employees have their soil and reasons for existence. "Different enterprises have peak seasons and off-seasons for production and operation, and the application of shared employees is the optimal consideration of enterprises based on costs and benefits, so as to achieve the optimal allocation of labor resources to maximize the effectiveness of labor resources. ”

"But if an enterprise wants long-term sustainable development and enhances its core competitiveness, it can't just rely on sharing employees. Shared employees can only be a temporary contingency measure. Luo Mingzhong said that from the perspective of the long-term development of the enterprise, due to the information asymmetry between the enterprise and the shared employees, coupled with the short-term nature of the project contract, it may not be conducive to the development of some long-term projects that require teamwork. The phenomenon of "involution" should not be blamed on "shared employees", and the mismatch between the supply and demand of high-quality jobs is an important reason for "involution". "This mismatch may not only stem from differences in technology, but also be affected by various factors such as economic and social development. Today's pursuit of job stability has exacerbated this mismatch to a certain extent. ”

Select "Share" and note that a written agreement is signed

The industry has been talking about "shared employees" all the time. At the 2023 National People's Congress and the National People's Congress, some CPPCC members proposed the implementation of the "shared employee" model, the main contents of which include: the government will formulate a unified version of the third-party agreement contract model to standardize the social security payment and welfare benefits of the lender and the borrower, so as to ensure that employees enjoy the same treatment at the loan stage.

Luo Mingzhong believes that the nature, applicable conditions and responsibilities of shared employees should be further clarified from the institutional level, so that there are laws to follow, promote the standardized development of shared employees in accordance with the requirements of standardization and platformization, and prevent possible labor disputes and legal risks. "In particular, in terms of the protection of trade secrets, it is necessary to ensure that trade secrets are not leaked due to sharing through relevant systems and contracts. Luo Mingzhong said.

Lu Jingliang believes that in order to promote the standardized development of the new employment form of "shared employees", first of all, it is necessary to clarify and standardize the division of rights and responsibilities. The rights, obligations, risks and responsibilities of the demander, workers and suppliers are determined in the form of a written agreement to prevent possible labor disputes and legal risks.

In addition to clarifying the division of rights and responsibilities, Lu Jingliang believes that it is equally important to improve the protection mechanism for workers' rights and interests and improve the construction of the "shared employee" platform. "It is necessary to improve the relevant labor law system and consultation and coordination mechanism, so as to ensure the fair handling of labor disputes and ensure that the rights and interests of workers and employers can be protected in a timely and effective manner in the event of employment disputes. At the same time, the employment method will be streamlined and transparent, so as to avoid malicious price reduction behaviors that may occur when supply and demand do not match, and improve the disadvantaged position of workers in the labor market. ”

Qu Meifang reminded that if the worker chooses "sharing", he should pay attention to signing a written agreement to clarify the rights and obligations of the parties, including the confirmation of the relationship between the parties, the sharing time, the specific working hours, the place of work, the content of the work, the labor protection conditions, the labor remuneration standard and the time and method of payment, the accommodation arrangement, the return arrangement after the sharing is over, the division of responsibilities and compensation methods after the worker's work-related injury, and the settlement of transportation and other expenses, etc., how to deal with the situation when the original unit is still unable to accept the sharing after the end of the sharing.

Produced by the News Department of Guangzhou

Written by: Nandu reporter Xia Jiawen intern Ou Yongshi