The Paper's special commentator Yu Ping
On September 10, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and other departments held an administrative guidance meeting for platform enterprises to jointly provide administrative guidance to 10 leading platform enterprises such as Meituan, Ele.me, Didi, Alibaba, and Tencent on safeguarding the labor security rights and interests of workers in new employment forms.
In July this year, with the consent of the State Council, the eight departments jointly issued the Guiding Opinions on Safeguarding the Labor Security Rights and Interests of Workers in New Employment Forms (hereinafter referred to as the Opinions), which for the first time clarified a number of focal issues such as platform responsibility, remuneration, rest, and occupational injury protection, and supported a system "protection network" for the rights and interests of workers in new formats.
The administrative guidance meeting aims to promote the further implementation of the "Opinions" by urging the head platform enterprises to "go ahead and do demonstrations". The 10 participating companies this time are all head platforms, and large platforms must have big responsibilities and take the lead in demonstrating.
The content of the meeting covered all aspects of the responsibilities of the platform enterprises: the platform not only has the responsibility for the employment of the workers, but also has the responsibility to supervise the employment of the cooperative enterprises in accordance with the law; the labor contract should be concluded for the qualified workers, and the labor remuneration, rest, labor safety and other rights and interests should be protected for those who do not meet the conditions for the time being; after a comprehensive investigation, the requirements of the "Opinions" should be formulated, the rectification plan should be formulated, the enterprise management system should be improved, and the labor appeal mechanism should be unblocked.
This is a response to several key and difficult issues in the new employment form, and it is also a "task list" for platform enterprises. What to do, how to do each step, the platform should have a number in mind.
In recent years, due to the rapid development of new technologies and new formats, online ride-hailing drivers, couriers, takeaway delivery workers and other new format workers represented by various "brothers" have become an important force in the job market. According to the data, in 2020, the number of sharing economy service providers alone will reach 84 million, and there is still a rapid growth trend.
New business forms of workers belong to non-standard employment, the identification of labor relations naturally has a vague area, the social insurance coverage rate is relatively low, coupled with the excessive pursuit of efficiency by some enterprises, artificially ignoring the protection of workers' rights and interests, resulting in many tricky dilemmas in the protection of workers' rights and interests. The previous hotly discussed "overwork death", "trapped in the algorithm", "platform extraction is too high", etc., are typical problems.
From the two sessions, the CPPCC members submitted the proposal "On Strengthening the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Workers in New Employment Forms", to Premier Li Keqiang's repeated statement that he would support the institutional umbrella for more than 200 million flexible employment personnel, to the July National Standing Committee to determine a number of policy measures to strengthen the protection of the rights and interests of workers in new employment forms and the promulgation of the "Opinions", to the joint administrative guidance this time... At the national level, measures for the protection of the rights and interests of workers in new formats have been continuous, the pace has been accelerated, and the intensity has been strengthened.
Relevant platform enterprises shall conscientiously follow the requirements to check and fill in the gaps. It should be noted that improving the protection of workers' rights and interests is not only a requirement of supervision and law, but also the general trend of the times. In fact, the asymmetry between the rights and responsibilities of the platform and the workers, the insufficient protection of the vital interests of the workers, and even the poor perception of some platform enterprises by public opinion have become a constraint restricting the economic growth of the platform.
Building a more harmonious labor-management relationship is a hurdle that must be crossed for the healthy development of the platform economy, and it is also a question that must be answered well. All kinds of labor security measures previously owed to the "brother", such as contracts, insurance, benefits, etc., must be replaced.
Editor-in-Charge: Gan Qiongfang