Economic Daily: Eliminating Worries for Flexible Workers

Recently, the State Council issued the "Implementation of the '15th Five-Year Plan' for Employment Priority Strategy", clearly proposing to "broaden the channels for flexible employment and the development of new forms of employment", emphasizing "protecting the legitimate rights and interests of flexible employment and new forms of employment workers", in order to eliminate the worries of practitioners and inject more certainty into flexible employment and new forms of employment, and further promote the healthy development of flexible employment and new forms of employment. Flexible employment and new forms of employment have low entry and exit thresholds and strong vitality, and have become important "reservoirs" for absorbing employment. According to data from the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, there are about 84 million workers in new forms of employment; according to data from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the scale of flexible employment in China exceeded 200 million people last year. Platform enterprises must truly fulfill their responsibilities, strengthen governance, which is an important prerequisite for the healthy development of flexible employment and new forms of employment. Platforms should include dispatching logic, income calculation, and delivery routes in negotiation topics, to better protect the laborers' rights to information, participation, and choice; they should not deliberately lengthen the labor chain through joining, agency contracting, or make laborers register as individual businesses to evade labor relationships and shift labor risks.