Give full play to platform economy to stabilize employment

China's flexible employment has exceeded 200 million people, and the platform economy is developing rapidly.2022 In January, the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments jointly issued the Opinions on Promoting the Standardized, Healthy and Sustainable Development of the Platform Economy, which proposes to strengthen the protection of the rights and interests of laborers in the new employment pattern.2023 In May, the State Council issued a "package of policies and measures to firmly stabilize the economy", which proposes to give full play to the stabilizing role of the platform economy in stabilizing employment. This issue invites experts to discuss relevant issues. This issue invites experts to discuss related issues.

Moderator: Xu Xiangmei, director of our theory department and researcher

Platform labor has become an important new form of employment

Moderator: What are the new features of platform labor compared to traditional labor?

Wang Weijin (Director of the Research Office of Public **** Management, Institute of Public **** Management and Human Resources Research, Development Research Center of the State Council): With the rapid development of the digital economy and digital society, platform labor such as takeaway riders, couriers, online car drivers, online domestic service workers and webcasters has become an important new form of employment, and the scale of the rapid growth. According to the China ****Help Economy Development Report (2021) released by the State Information Center, in 2020, China had 6.31 million platform enterprise employees and about 84 million ****Help Economy service providers, an increase of 6 million from the previous year. Taking online car drivers as an example, in recent years, China's online car driver company business license volume has risen month by month, and the online car driver license has grown rapidly from 2,545,000 in October 2020 to 4,888,000 in October this year. Then, such as catering delivery personnel, in 2018, China only has 125,000 employees in catering distribution and takeaway delivery services, as of June this year, only the Meituan registered riders are 4.7 million people.

Platform labor is highly inclusive of people. Platform labor, especially *** enjoy platform labor radiation industry field, job type, full-time and part-time flexible, has a strong inclusiveness. From the viewpoint of job demand, platform employment includes both labor-intensive positions such as takeaway riders and online car drivers, as well as knowledge-intensive positions such as online education and creative planning, which provide employment opportunities for job seekers with different levels of education and skills. Taking the DDT platform as an example, 41.1% of full-time drivers in recent years have come from the manufacturing industry and 13.6% from the transportation industry. In terms of types of occupations, new platform-related occupations are emerging. among the four batches and 56 new occupations to be released by the state from 2019 to 2022, platform-related occupations such as digitalization manager and IoT installer and debugger account for a fairly high proportion. Not only that, platforms can adjust labor supply in a timely manner according to market needs and reduce frictional unemployment. For example, during the epidemic, 35.2% of riders on the Meituan platform came from factory workers, 31.4% came from people starting their own business or doing small business on their own, and 17.8% came from office staff.

Platforms are at an advantage in hiring labor. An important difference between platform employment and traditional employment is that the platform has become the organizational carrier and organizational mode of employment, and the platform is in an advantageous position in labor relations by mastering the big data resources and technology generated by the operation. This is reflected in two aspects: first, the advantage of labor rule-making. The normal operation of the platform needs rules, registering on the platform means accepting the rules of the platform. Take the platform and crowdsourcing riders sign labor agreements as an example, the platform has the right to decide on the provision of labor demand information, distribution service specifications, compensation and rewards and punishment rules, social security insurance, etc. Riders must accept all the registration and order, negotiation space is limited. Second, the technical advantages of labor deployment. The platform has massive data on consumers and labor, and can rely on big data algorithms and artificial intelligence to continuously optimize labor allocation and improve efficiency. The platform can find the closest and shortest rider through algorithms, and then prompt the rider to reduce the delivery time.

The average working hours of platform laborers are on the long side. In 2020, the two industries with the longest average weekly working hours for urban employees in China were accommodation and catering, wholesale and retail, reaching 52.6 hours and 50.1 hours, respectively, and transportation, storage and postal services. hours, and the transportation, storage and postal industry also reached 49.3 hours, much higher than the average level of 47.0 hours for urban employees, and even higher than China's statutory standard working hours of 40 hours per week. Not only that, in recent years, the weekly working hours of these industries have shown rapid growth.

The social security of platform workers needs to be resolved urgently. From the point of view of social insurance, China's current social insurance to the formal labor contract relationship as a prerequisite, platform workers, especially flexible employment is different from the general labor contract relationship, the employment of workers to take more self-employment or labor cooperation, multi-platform employment at the same time is more common, and it is difficult to meet the conditions of social insurance participation. At present, platform workers can participate in pension and medical insurance by making individual contributions, but the actual participation rate of platform flexibly employed persons is not high because of the high contributions, the difficulty of transferring from one place to another, and the complexity of the procedures. In view of the difficulty of participating in social insurance, platform enterprises generally choose for flexible employment personnel on commercial insurance, but the protection is limited.

The legal protection of labor on the platform faces adaptive difficulties. China's regulation of labor relations mainly rely on civil law and labor law. Civil law is mainly for equal civil subjects, regulating the employment of domestic workers and other independent labor of natural persons. The labor law targets workers in a disadvantaged position and regulates subordinate leadership such as the employment of employees by enterprises. The rapid development of platform labor makes the current labor law system face adaptability challenges. Take the example of labor on the delivery platform, dedicated riders mostly sign labor contracts with the platform, establishing a formal labor relationship, which is clearly protected by labor law. Ask me to appear in crowdsourcing riders and other platforms with complex labor characteristics of employment, these flexible employment personnel do not have a formal labor contract relationship, in whether to work, when to work, where to work and other issues have greater autonomy and flexibility. At the same time, the labor environment in which they work is also more complex, such as the need to travel quickly through the streets and alleys, and the labor risk factor is also higher. Therefore, there is an urgent need to improve labor laws and regulations, improve the consultation and coordination mechanism of labor relations, improve the system of protection of workers' rights and interests, and strengthen the protection of the rights and interests of workers in flexible employment and new forms of employment in accordance with the deployment of the Twentieth National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Technological progress to promote the transformation of employment pattern

Moderator:The expansion of the scale of platform labor, reflecting China's employment pattern of how to change? How to understand the relationship between economic development, technological progress and the transformation of employment patterns?

Li Lixing (Professor, National Development Research Institute, Peking University): The expansion of the scale of platform employment is a manifestation of the development of the digital economy in the labor market, reflecting the following changes in the pattern of employment in China.

First, the transformation of offline work to online work. On the one hand, the development of digital industry, creating a large number of new online jobs; on the other hand, through the digital transformation of industry, empowering the traditional industry, but also changed the employment pattern of the traditional industry, which is more prominent is the rise of flexible employment in the platform economy. Flexible employment is mainly presented in two forms, "online labor market" and "application-based on-demand work". The former mainly matches supply and demand through Internet platforms and provides remote services online, with knowledge-intensive features such as crowdsourced programming, live streaming and online consulting. The latter is mainly to instantly match supply and demand within the local area, mostly belonging to the labor-intensive service industry, including online taxi drivers, takeaway riders, etc. Although their actual work tasks are completed offline, but the information release, payment of compensation, evaluation and supervision of the links completed online.

Secondly, there is a shift from fixed jobs to flexible employment. Globally, more and more young people are getting rid of full-time jobs and turning their attention to flexible employment. The high efficiency embodied in the matching of labor supply and demand and the allocation of work tasks by platforms using data and algorithmic advantages is undoubtedly one of the key reasons for facilitating this shift. Taking online car rental and takeaway delivery as an example, their work tasks are based on platform orders, and the fulfillment of each order is similar to a virtual production line, where the work tasks are completed in a flexible way to get paid. Their flexibility in terms of working hours and other aspects meets the preference of a considerable part of the labor force, especially young people, in choosing jobs.

Third, the shift from single-occupation to diversified employment. Diversified employment in the platform economy includes providing the same kind of work to multiple platforms (e.g., takeout riders), as well as providing different work to single or multiple platforms (e.g., online car drivers who also set up online stores to sell their goods), and part-time work while engaging in traditional jobs (e.g., employees driving a ride on their way to and from work). In the case of diversified employment, it is often difficult to distinguish which occupation is the main occupation of a worker.

Fourth, the definition of entrepreneurship has become blurred. Traditionally, there is a clear distinction between self-employed entrepreneurship and employed labor, but in the platform economy, the line between the two is no longer clear. Because the platform connects merchants, consumers, and laborers, some entrepreneurs have become more subordinate to the platform, while some employed workers have become less subordinate to their employers. At the same time, a large number of casual jobs are characterized by self-employment, and their subordination to platforms is somewhere between employed employment and self-employed entrepreneurship. The emergence of diverse and non-standard forms of employment is difficult to distinguish from traditional labor relations.

It is worth noting that the shift in employment patterns has occurred not only in China, but also widely in other countries. If hundreds of millions of migrant workers to the city is a unique phenomenon in China's labor market, then the emergence of new employment forms in the digital economy era is a structural change in the global labor market **** with. The reason for this is closely related to technological advances in the Internet, smart manufacturing and cloud computing. For example, the rapid development of the Internet has made communication and coordination between economic agents easier, transaction costs have shown a downward trend, and many production and service processes have been disaggregated, triggering a trend towards de-corporatization and de-organization. Another example is that the rapid development of cloud computing has moved the R&D and supply chain management of many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to the cloud, and technological progress has driven changes in the hiring needs of many enterprises, which have either carried out flattening reforms, downsized and slimmed down their staffs or outsourced their non-core processes, giving rise to such forms of employment as labor dispatch, labor outsourcing, crowdsourcing, and so on, which triggers the trend of informalization, flexibilization, and diversification of employment. It can be said that it is precisely because of technological progress that changes in the organizational structure of enterprises have been promoted and the transformation of employment patterns has been facilitated. And the emergence of platform enterprises has accelerated this transformation.

The transformation of employment patterns, accompanied by changes in the employment relationship, poses a challenge to business management. In the traditional fixed employment relationship, enterprises provide employees with wages, benefits, and payment of five insurance and one gold, and employees only serve one enterprise. When the fixed employment relationship diverges, under the short-term, flexible and diversified employment relationship, enterprises face many new situations and problems in maintaining the quality of employees and protecting their welfare. Whether we can change our concepts in time and make targeted innovations in business and organizational management is related to the sustainable development of our enterprises in the era of digital economy.

The shift in employment patterns also challenges the government's public **** services. For example, the existing public **** services, such as work injury insurance, unemployment insurance, employment training, etc., are mainly based on the fact that workers have fixed employment units to provide. When the "unit-based" public **** service system encounters the impact of a large number of new "non-unit-based" forms of employment, the protection of workers' rights and interests becomes a focal point. There is an urgent need to make corresponding adjustments in the institutional support, so that the public **** service system can effectively cover flexible employment and new forms of employment workers, protect their labor rights and interests, and solve the problem of their equal access to public **** services, which is also an important prerequisite for the realization of China's inclusive growth in the era of the digital economy.

Platform employment in the global booming

Moderator:The platform economy in the world to maintain rapid growth trend, so the platform employment in other countries present what characteristics?

Fang Lianquan (researcher at the Institute of Social Development Strategy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and secretary general of the World Social Security Research Center): A clear trend in the global economic transformation is the rise of the digital economy, and a series of Internet information technologies, such as big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and blockchain, have extensively infiltrated all aspects of production and life, and triggered a change in the mode of employment. Distinguished from the traditional labor contract and full-time type of employment, various types of non-standardized employment forms continue to emerge under the platform economy, fostering a large number of employment opportunities and leading to an increase in jobs.

According to the United Nations Telecommunications Association (UNTAES), 63% of the world's population will be Internet users in 2021. E-commerce platforms mainly use Internet technology to provide customers with online and offline services. As early as the 1990s, some e-commerce platforms began to appear in North American countries, outsourcing production and labor services to some low-income countries in the southern hemisphere. The early platforms mainly adopted the crowdsourcing service business model. For example, the U.S. company Elance was founded in 1999 to provide online job search services for freelancers around the world. in 2015, it merged with ODesk to become Upwork, which has grown to become one of the world's largest and most standardized recruiting platforms, with more than 5 million corporate clients. Into the 21st century, "crowdsourcing work" online platform gradually emerged, a large number of cabs and courier online service platforms began to appear, due to the convenience of its services and price and other aspects of the advantages, quickly accepted by the majority of users.

According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), the number of global e-commerce platforms has grown more than fivefold since 2010, and in 2021 there will be nearly 800 large-scale e-commerce platforms around the world, with two main types of services: online services and on-site services. The rapid growth of e-commerce platforms has boosted the development of the digital industry.In 2021, the global platform economy investment amounted to $119 billion, mainly concentrated in the cab and express delivery industries, generating operating income of $52 billion in the same year.The value of the global platform economy in 2018 was $142 billion, and it is expected to increase to $311.6 billion by 2023.

There are two main types of employment relationships on digital platforms: staff employed directly by the platform, i.e. internal employment; and employment opportunities provided by the platform as an intermediary, i.e. indirect employment driven by the platform. For example, Upwork, mentioned above, has more than 5.7 million full-time employees and more than 12 million part-time employees worldwide. Most of the online service-based platforms are micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), with fewer direct hires, mostly numbering less than 50. Uber, the world's largest cab platform company by hiring, has nearly 27,000 employees, mainly lawyers, software engineers and marketing, among others. In the courier industry, large companies such as Meituan, DeliveryHero (Germany), Swiggy (India), and Hungry Hut also employ more than 1,000 people.

The U.S. has the largest platform employment among developed economies, with about 22% of the working population participating in some form of the platform economy, especially in the more Internet- and service-oriented regions of Florida and California, where platforms have become a mainstay in absorbing new jobs. The size of the population involved in platform employment across the US is expected to reach 78 million by 2023. In the UK, employment in the courier industry grew by 350% between 2016 and 2021, domestic services by 166%, and remote online services by 100%, with 15% of workers taking part in at least one platform work task per week.

A number of emerging economies, including China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, and some Southeast Asian countries, have seen rapid development of the Internet industry in recent years amidst economic transformation, and platform employment has become a new growth point. According to estimates, the current global digital platform under the freelance workers are growing at an annual rate of 15%. Since the outbreak of the new Crown pneumonia epidemic, affected by the economic and employment situation, the work task has further shifted to remote home office and online services, the number of online registered platform practitioners has further increased, and has become an effective way to alleviate the pressure of unemployment in various countries.

From the point of view of personnel distribution, platform employment is mainly focused on youth, low-income earners and freelancers. The European Commission has divided platform work tasks into 27 categories, and the complexity of each type of work varies greatly. Generally speaking, online service-based platforms require higher quality workers, while those engaged in on-site services (including domestic services, takeaway food delivery and online car services, etc.) have lower skill levels. In terms of income, the average income of platform practitioners is higher than that of general jobs. A large number of platform workers work part-time, earning a subsidized income in addition to their regular wages, and nearly half of the respondents cited "the freedom to arrange working hours" as the most important factor for participating in platform work. At the same time, platform employment also encounters some unavoidable problems, including difficulties in identifying workers, unclear employment relationships, poor working conditions, unregulated employment, lack of labor contracts and protection of labor rights and interests, as well as loss of national tax revenues. In the face of these challenges, countries have made active exploration in strengthening labor legislation, employment regulation and labor rights protection, and have introduced measures to regulate the development of platform economy.

Overall, the development of platform employment is on the rise, and will certainly have a greater impact on the future business model and employment market. In the face of this new thing, the global need to collaborate, in the optimization of governance in the formation of **** knowledge, the platform employment into a more healthy and sustainable development path.

Improve the platform employment workers' rights and interests protection

Moderator:Platform economy in driving employment at the same time, but also to the relevant workers' rights and interests protection brings new challenges, the next step how to promote the platform employment more standardized development?

Chen Yun (Director of the Employment and Entrepreneurship Office of the China Academy of Labor and Social Security Sciences): The platform economy has played an irreplaceable and important role in stabilizing and promoting employment and entrepreneurship. Letting all workers*** enjoy the fruits of reform and development is a policy that the Party and the government have consistently adhered to.

How to make the platform economy develop more healthily and safeguard the labor security rights and interests of various types of platform employers is related to the realization of high-quality full employment, as well as fairness, justice and harmony and stability.2021 In 2021, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Affairs and other eight departments jointly issued the "Guiding Opinions on Safeguarding the Labor Security Rights and Interests of Workers in New Employment Forms," which strengthens the safeguard of the labor rights and interests of platform employers in many ways, and has achieved good effects and This has achieved good results and social repercussions. However, platform employment is characterized by a large number of people, complex composition, flexible employment methods, diversified relationships, and large differences in the rights and interests of workers, and the protection of their labor rights and interests is still faced with many new situations and new problems.

Implementing the spirit of the 20th Party Congress, supporting and regulating the development of new forms of employment, and strengthening the protection of the rights and interests of workers in flexible employment and new forms of employment require all parties to strengthen collaborative governance, continue to improve relevant laws and regulations, innovate the institutional setup, and optimize the policy operating environment and mechanism, and further increase the protection efforts, strengthen the safeguards, enhance the protection capacity and level.

First, to promote the standardized and sustainable development of the platform economy, and to consolidate the foundation for the protection of workers' employment and rights and interests. In line with the wave of digital economy development, adhere to the integration of digital reality, bigger and stronger a number of digital platform or industry leading enterprises, play its innovation, amplification, superposition, multiplier effect, create more new employment opportunities and jobs. Guiding various types of platform enterprises to establish a sustainable business and profit model, improving the level of platform development, avoiding the old road of "low labor cost" development, avoiding the "low labor cost advantage" into the "low human capital development trap", adhering to the principle of "low labor cost advantage" and "low human capital development trap", and adhering to the principle of "low labor cost advantage". Avoid falling from the "low labor cost advantage" into the "low human capital development trap", and adhere to the business development and human resource strategy of "high-quality employment" for "high-quality development". While promoting the sustainable development of platform enterprises, we will realize the sustainability of employment opportunities, careers and security capabilities of platform employees.

Secondly, strengthening collaborative governance. Under the principle of inclusiveness and prudence, standardization and promotion, we should strengthen government management and industry norms, and improve the platform governance mechanism. Platform enterprises should adhere to the development direction of technology to the good, establish a sense of social responsibility, consciously comply with the law to employ workers, actively fulfill the responsibility of employment, standardize the operation and management behavior, to avoid non-operational risks. Play the role of trade unions, industry associations and other organizations to promote self-regulation of the industry and its practitioners' behavior. Utilizing the subjective initiative of workers themselves, clarifying their roles as practitioners in corporate governance, and exercising their rights to democratic participation. Improve the consultation and coordination mechanism, listen more to the opinions and suggestions of workers' representatives and trade union organizations when formulating system rules and platform algorithms on important matters such as labor remuneration, labor process management, labor time and intensity, and open up complaint and reporting channels.

Third, strengthen the policy supply and increase the systematic, inclusive and accessible nature of the policy. Strengthen the top-level design, timely revision and improvement of the Employment Promotion Law, the Labor Contract Law and other relevant laws. Research into the formulation of wage and hour and other relevant labor standards, and the establishment of basic standards for the protection of labor rights and interests. Improve the social security system for flexibly employed persons, and effectively implement the principle that flexibly employed persons may participate in pension and medical insurance at their place of employment regardless of household registration. Evaluating and studying the effectiveness of the pilot program of occupational injury protection for employees in new industries, such as take-out, just-in-time delivery, and same-city freight transport, and improving and promoting it in an orderly manner at an appropriate time. Guiding and supporting workers in new forms of employment who are not in full compliance with labor relations to participate in appropriate social insurance according to their own circumstances. Expanding the scope of unemployment insurance coverage, and studying and exploring the inclusion of various types of flexibly employed persons. Innovate flexible social security payment methods and explore social security payment services for platform employees.

Fourth, to further clarify the relationship between the rights and responsibilities of multiple subjects. To clarify the legal and institutional relationships between the different sectors involved in various new forms of employment, and to clarify the boundaries of the rights and responsibilities of the main parties involved in various types of labor protection rights and interests. In cases where a labor relationship is established, or where the enterprise does not fully comply with the conditions for establishing a labor relationship, but the enterprise manages the labor of the worker, the platform enterprise shall assume the corresponding responsibility for the protection of the rights and interests of the worker; in the case of labor dispatching, outsourcing, and other forms of cooperation in the employment of labor, the platform enterprise and the cooperating enterprise shall assume the responsibility for their respective employment of labor in accordance with the law. Improve the platform flexible employment personnel employment regulations, encourage enterprises to innovate management methods and approaches, for the inability to sign a labor contract, as soon as possible to implement the relevant contract or agreement model, in a timely manner on the working hours, the recognition of work-related injuries, labor disputes and so on to make an agreement.

Fifth, the innovation and improvement of the platform labor rights and interests of workers to protect the working mechanism, strengthen the construction of the service system. Increase labor security supervision, innovative supervision means and methods, supervise enterprises to implement the responsibility of protecting the rights and interests of workers, and promote the treatment of outstanding labor compensation, illegal overtime and other prominent issues. Utilizing administrative guidance and issuing guidance on typical judicial cases, it has guided the relevant responsible parties and subjects to effectively implement the requirements of regulations and policies. Accelerating the construction of service outlets such as odd-job stations and labor stations, improving the urban comprehensive service network, and providing timely policy consultation, mediation of labor disputes and conflicts, employment information docking, and temporary rest after work and other work-life conveniences for platform workers.