Crowdsourced rider insurance coverage

With the door ajar, the resident stretched out a hand to get the takeaway. Before he could see what the resident looked like, the delivery boy Li Bing (pseudonym) blurted out the phrase "I wish you a happy meal" that he had said hundreds of times. He hurried downstairs and got on the electric car parked downstairs in the community.

Ele.me said that the protection against accidental death of foreign sellers is not enough and more needs to be done. From now on, the company will continue to add special pensions for similar situations to the "Blue Rider Care Fund" so that all Blue Rider (Ele.me Takeaway) families can enjoy the dual protection of insurance and care fund.

Secondly, Ele.me has also said that the current insurance structure of crowdsourcing knights is not reasonable, and the insurance amount is still insufficient. Ele.me promotes improved protection and structural optimization, increasing the insured amount to 600,000 yuan. Before the new insurance regulations are implemented, the platform will provide pensions. The 600,000 yuan pension in this incident will be delivered to the family members of the delivery driver within this week.

With the rise of the Internet era, crowdsourcing platforms emerged as the times require. On the one hand, there is flexible employment, on the other hand, there is no "five insurances and one housing fund". The development of crowdsourcing platforms has been discussed to this day. In the new era, flexible employment has impacted the original labor relations. What responsibilities should employment platforms bear? How do crowdsourced riders protect their rights? How to regulate the development of flexible employment?

Helmet printing team, are you hungry for your coat printing?

They are crowdsourcing riders of "flexible and free employment"

At 12 noon on January 8, Li Bing was wearing a helmet with a Meituan logo and blue clothes from Ele.me. Knocked on the door of a resident in Daxing, Beijing. "Your meal has arrived."

"If you crowdsource, no one will take care of it. You can go to work at any time." This is the 10th order delivered by Li Bing today. Recently, the weather in Beijing has been cold, and Li Bing didn't get up until nine in the morning. "We can go to and from get off work at any time, and there is no penalty for punching in, but there will be penalties for working overtime and paying in advance."

At 0:35 on January 9, the temperature in Beijing was already minus 9 degrees Celsius. Yang Xue (pseudonym), a 32-year-old delivery boy, is grabbing orders at a restaurant on Qingnian Road. Yang Xue took orders from two platforms at the same time, crowdsourcing and Ele.me crowdsourcing. He chose the crowdsourcing model instead of full-time, saying it was mainly for the freedom and lack of constraints.

Within one hour, 6 out of 7 orders were successfully sent and 1 order was returned. He made a total of more than 60 yuan. At around 1:40, Yang Xue sent a message saying that three more orders would be received.

Li Bing and Yang Xue are both members of the crowdsourcing army. Crowdsourcing mode refers to a company or organization outsourcing tasks that were previously performed by employees to unspecified people in a free and voluntary manner. Take the user agreement of the Hummingbird platform as an example. Hummingbird will sign a user agreement with the user before they register as a crowdsourcing knight.

Xiaotian has also worked in the food delivery industry for many years and is now the person in charge of a food delivery site in Wuhan. He introduced that the current ratio of dedicated delivery riders and crowdsourcing riders on the food delivery platform is basically 6:4. "Crowdsourcing riders are very mobile because no one restricts whether they want to run one order every day or how long they want to run. They are the kind of people who can ride if they want to, but can't if they don't want to."

Crowdsourcing The proportion of package rider platforms is low. Xiaotian said, "Express delivery is guaranteed by the quality of express delivery services. Any problems during delivery will be borne by the delivery site, but the platform commission is higher. Crowdsourcing riders have a large delivery range, but there is no quality guarantee for delivery services. The platform is slightly lower, About 17%.

At the same time, the work flexibility is high. “When an order comes, the crowdsourcing rider can choose whether to accept the order or not, and the order will appear. The merchant has picked up the meal, but there is no rider to take the order, causing the order to be canceled and the merchant's meal was wasted. In addition, crowdsourcing riders will be deducted for each vote, money will be deducted for complaints, and no money will be deducted for negative reviews. Xiaotian said.

Li Bing also said that crowdsourcing is relatively free, but there are also express agents, who are specialized express agents. "There is a webmaster responsible for delivery, how about you

Services closely related to public life, such as takeout, flash delivery, and intra-city delivery, are all just-in-time logistics. Logistics expert Zhao Xiaomin said that currently, common logistics fulfillment models on ready-to-use platforms include subcontracting, express delivery, crowdsourcing, etc. However, the crowdsourcing model accounts for more than 70% of them and will remain the mainstream in the future.

The blue book "China's Flexible Employment Development Report (2021)" released by the School of Labor and Human Resources of Renmin University of China and Renrui Talent and Social Science Literature Publishing House shows that in 2020, the proportion of enterprises adopting flexible employment increased by more than 11% year-on-year. , reaching 55.68%; more than three-quarters of companies use flexible employment mainly for the motive of "reducing labor costs."

“The crowdsourcing model can be seen in fields that basically require a large amount of labor. Without it, industries such as food delivery would not be able to develop so fast. A platform needs to recruit millions of people and conduct management training, which requires A lot of manpower and financial resources. But with this third-party outsourcing company, the workload of the platform is relatively easy,” said Internet observer Ding Daoshi.

At present, platforms such as Internet companies Meituan and Ele.me are using the crowdsourcing model. Zhao Xiaomin said that the advantages of the crowdsourcing model are obvious, such as the use of idle social resources, cost reduction, high efficiency of platform matching transactions, diversification of fees, and large submission volume. On the other hand, the stability of order distribution will be challenged, legal disputes will be common, and some ethical criticism will be faced.

Professor Xue Jun, deputy dean of Peking University Law School, said that there is no problem with the legality of the crowdsourcing model and that it is a new business format. But now there is a big problem in law or policy, which is how to build a social security system for practitioners under this new business model? Takeout may not have a fixed single affiliation, so it is different from ordinary labor relations, but the difference does not mean that it should not be protected.

Zhang Jianping, a lawyer at Guangdong Law School Shengbang Law Firm, said that the three standards for determining labor relations, namely subject, subordination, and provision of labor services, are all business components. If the delivery person and the platform meet the above attributes, a labor relationship will be established. If there is indeed no labor relationship between the platform and the delivery person, the platform can be exempted from labor laws. This is a legal issue, and there are differing opinions on whether it is reasonable and ethical.

Ding Xiaodong, associate professor at the Law School of Renmin University of China, said that in terms of labor law or workers’ rights and interests, the first thing the gig economy affects is the determination of labor relations. As we all know, in our country, labor relations and the identification of labor relations have a series of different legal consequences. If the relevant relationship in the gig economy is recognized as a labor relationship, the employer must bear many mandatory obligations stipulated in the law. For example, the employer must pay workers a wage higher than or equal to government regulations. The local minimum wage standards, etc.; workers' working hours must not exceed legal hours; the rights and interests of special groups such as women are compulsorily protected by relevant laws. If it is a labor relationship, basically there is no need to bear corresponding responsibilities.

But Ding Xiaodong also said that more and more courts around the world have developed a new understanding, that is, it does not have to be identified as a labor relationship before the platform can be found to be responsible. "Even if it is not a labor relationship, relationship does not mean that the platform does not have to bear responsibilities, especially when it comes to personal safety and security."

Crowdsourcing riders “can only solve anything if anything happens by themselves”

3 yuan of insurance premiums will be deducted every day, but they don’t know what it includes

One of the crowdsourcers After hearing this, the deliveryman said, "Before the accident happened, we were all employees. If something happened, we wouldn't care." Another deliveryman who delivered medicine said, "Crowdsourcing, part-time, and so on, but this is definitely the case." It is the responsibility of the platform.”

It is understood that the income of crowdsourcing riders mainly consists of commissions for running orders, plus distance subsidies, time period subsidies (late night snacks, breakfasts), bad weather subsidies, etc. Li Bing said that in summer, he earns an average of 4.5 yuan in delivery fees per order, and in winter, he earns an average of 8 yuan in delivery fees per order.

Crowdsourcing riders do not have five insurances and one housing fund, and they do not sign any labor contracts. Xiaotian said, “There is almost no protection for the rights and interests of crowdsourcing riders. If anything happens, they can only solve it by themselves, including but not limited to: if the vehicle breaks down during delivery, they can solve it by themselves, if there is a traffic accident, they can go through the insurance process by themselves, and by themselves, merchants and customers can deal with all kinds of problems. You can solve all kinds of problems by yourself.”

At the same time, most of the delivery workers interviewed were not clear about the specific protection content included in the insurance they paid. A full-time delivery worker said that dozens of dollars in accident insurance are deducted from his salary every month. But he also said, “I don’t know what these insurances are for.

Another part-time delivery worker said that 3 yuan of insurance was deducted every day, but he "didn't look too carefully" at what was covered. Most of the others said, "I haven't applied for it, so I don't know." "

Xue Yang's understanding of this insurance is that it mainly protects accidents, "Whether someone else bumps into you or you bump into someone else, it is considered an accident and is covered by this insurance. "But at the same time, he also believed that this insurance was of little use, because "the maximum coverage seems to be only 60,000," and he said he did not know the specific content.

Not long after starting crowdsourcing, Xue Yang came to the family I suggested buying other accident insurance and medical insurance for myself. "The platform has many rules. Sometimes they play word games. We are all illiterate. If you can't play with them, you might as well get your own insurance." "

A delivery boy who works part-time throughout the day said, "Even if something goes wrong, you can't find anyone. He said he didn’t know exactly what the three yuan insurance premium deducted every day covered.

Wang Haiyi (pseudonym) is also a part-time employee on two platforms: Ele.me and Meituan Takeaway. As a delivery boy, he said, "3 yuan will be deducted every day when I go online. If I work for two companies at the same time, 6 yuan will be deducted every day." Wang Haiyi said that he didn't know what the 3 yuan deduction included, but the platform would deduct it every day. No, there has been no need to make a claim.

“The current insurance for special delivery riders is about 120 yuan per month, and the maximum claim amount is 1 million. Crowdsourced riders have insurance, which costs 3 yuan per day, which is deducted from the commission of the first order every day. There is indeed no labor relationship between crowdsourcing riders and the platform, and the insurance process is very cumbersome. If the crowdsourcing riders don’t know how to go through the insurance process themselves, it will basically be useless if something goes wrong. "Xiaotian introduced.

"For commercial insurance of 1 yuan, the maximum claim amount is 1 million. Which insurance company will accept it? "Xiaotian asked back, the 3 yuan insurance paid by the delivery staff every day has all gone to the insurance company, and there is no money being deducted as service fees.

On January 8, for delivery staff every day, Regarding the issue of being deducted 3 yuan in premiums, Ele.me responded in the announcement that in the current crowdsourcing service contract, crowdsourcing riders will pay a 3 yuan service fee before running orders every day, which will be collected by the Ele.me platform. The platform will then pay a portion of the fee and hand it over to the human resources provider served by the rider, entrusting it to provide labor management and safety protection services for the crowdsourced rider. It is agreed that the human resources provider will insure the rider against accidents. < /p>

"Riders should actively protect their rights and interests through judicial means"

"Calling on large companies and platforms to introduce third-party insurance"

Han, a lawyer at Beijing Kangda Law Firm Xiao believes that from a formal point of view, there seems to be no problem with the legality of the crowdsourcing model. As an independent legal person, the platform has the right to decide independently whether to sign agreements with other legal persons and entrust part of its business to other companies for operation, and distribution companies also have the right to sign independently. Agreement and determine the content of the agreement within the legal scope. If the contracts between the parties in the crowdsourcing model are not invalid or revocable, these contracts should be considered to be legally established and valid.

“So when all contracts under the crowdsourcing model are legal and valid, the legality of the crowdsourcing model itself should be affirmed. Due to the existence of legality, it should be considered whether the platform company is suspected of evading the responsibility of the employer. Such questions appear to be too ambiguous and cannot be answered directly at the legal level. "Han Xiao said.

"As far as the current situation is concerned, when food delivery riders encounter problems with the determination of labor relations and labor relations in the process of protecting their own rights and interests, they should still actively go through arbitration, Litigation and other means require judicial authorities to review, and if it can be proved that a labor relationship is constituted, one can protect one's own rights and interests in accordance with the relevant provisions of the labor law. "Han Xiao suggested.

Zhao Xiaomin said that there is indeed a lot of room for improvement in the crowdsourcing model guarantee. However, due to the relatively fast development in the past, in order to encourage the development of the entire platform, supervision is adopted The principles are flexibility and prudence. Now that the scale of each platform is getting larger and larger, the follow-up protection of employees needs to keep up. We call on large platforms and companies to take the lead in setting an example, such as introducing third-party insurance.

“The fragmentation of labor will also bring growth problems to workers. Workers may have more job opportunities or more opportunities to change jobs, and have higher flexibility in time management. But if workers blindly Working odd jobs without systematic learning or transformation and upgrading of labor skills may be detrimental to the workers' own growth.

It may also be a huge challenge for the overall transformation and upgrading of our country's labor force capabilities. " said Ding Xiaodong, associate professor at the School of Law of Renmin University of China.

As an industry veteran for many years, Xiaotian believes that crowdsourcing is a product that is not in line with the development of the food delivery industry. In the past year, crowdsourcing has become more and more popular. It’s difficult to do because special delivery has delivery quality guarantees and there are enough dedicated delivery personnel, so crowdsourcing orders in the area will be forced to be converted into dedicated delivery orders.

“The crowdsourcing model is part of the rapid development of the food delivery industry. The remaining problems are that while developing, personnel cannot keep up with the growth in order volume. Because the food delivery platform reduces the unit price of special delivery almost every year, causing the unit price of riders to drop, and riders turn to crowdsourcing. "Xiaotian said that the only way to change is for the food delivery platform to increase the pricing of special delivery. Once the rider price is in place and the order volume is stable, no one will do crowdsourcing. Related Q&A: It is too risky for crowdsourcing riders to stop operating in 2023. Crowdsourced riders are different from dedicated delivery riders. They refer to a type of rider who can take orders on multiple food delivery platforms and can register at any time. Because the management policies of each platform are different, Meituan Food Delivery’s management and control measures can ensure this. Riders work with certificates, but there may still be cases where other platforms dispatch orders to undocumented people. The police reminded that during the epidemic, electronic passes issued by relevant departments are necessary conditions and passes for delivery personnel to work, in order to ensure delivery. Personnel comply with relevant epidemic prevention and safety management regulations. The police will continue to strictly investigate and punish delivery personnel who do not obtain electronic passes to engage in delivery and delivery services, and do not accept nucleic acid tests as required. Related Questions and Answers: For takeaways, choose Meituan. Is it better to give it away or crowdsource it? Can anyone give me a good suggestion?

Original text: /content/108497

I saw #我 Help Riders Run a Order# on Weibo. I find it very interesting to launch an activity. I often rely on food delivery to survive, but I rarely have the opportunity to chat with food delivery riders and learn about their lives. I thought I could use this way to get out of my own life. Seeing their happiness and distress

I helped the rider run an order

I ordered two takeaways (one milk tea, one meal), and three takeaways. The riders chatted, and one of them was sitting on a public chair. I saw that he was also resting on his mobile phone, so I went over and chatted with him for a while until he went to pick up his meal. I chose to go in the afternoon. From 2 o'clock to 4 o'clock, because the delivery riders will not be very busy at this time, I may have time to chat. After placing the order using my usual address, I sat by a flower bed near the merchant and waited for the rider to arrive. I called them to explain the situation and asked them to pick up the meal and bring it directly to me.

While waiting for the rider to pick up the meal and bring it to me, I experienced it from their perspective for the first time. The urgency of "time".

Screenshot of the ordering page, provided by the author

On one occasion, after I ordered the meal, the total delivery time given by the system was 42 minutes and 3 minutes. Finally, the system showed that the rider set out to pick up the food on an electric scooter 1.6 kilometers away. However, after entering the store, the waiting time to pick up the food was very long. It initially showed that the food would be picked up in 10 minutes, but 7 minutes later, the food was picked up. The time became 11 minutes. This waiting process was quite anxious. Finally, after waiting for more than 20 minutes, with about 15 minutes left in the total time, the rider finally got the meal. The destination address of the order is about 2 kilometers away from the store, and there are 5 traffic lights in between. If during meal time, the rider must have more than 3 orders on hand at the same time, and their anxiety and tension may be much more than what I have experienced.

The timeline on the left is the prompt provided by the takeout software to the user; the timeline on the right is the remaining time calculated by myself after completing the order, but I will find that it does not match the system

After receiving the meal, the riders and I started chatting about their work and life. First, let’s talk about the rewards during the Spring Festival. Some time ago, it was revealed that Ele.me had set a maximum reward of 8,000 yuan for New Year’s Eve riders. However, they were unwilling to give it. They made a show of making everyone stay and place orders. In the end, they all failed. I can't get this money. So I asked three riders about their experiences.

Meituan Special Delivery Rider No. 1: About 25-30 years old, he went home for the Spring Festival! Don't let these rewards keep you from going home.

He heard that the reward given by Meituan was not as much as 8,000 yuan. In addition to the normal money for the order, there may be a reward of 2,000 yuan.

Note: Special delivery is similar to a full-time job. You must go online and run orders within the specified time every day, and Meituan’s contractor site will conduct daily management

Ele.me No. 2 Special for riders: After 2000, there are still a few months until I turn 20. He only started joining Ele.me at the end of December last year and went home for almost 8 days during the Chinese New Year. But I still got the "return to work reward". This reward started from November 30 to February 28 for two months. If some of the conditions were met (I forgot to ask!), the little brother got nearly 3,000 yuan. Quite satisfied with this.

I wonder if this rider would have gotten the money so smoothly if Ele.me’s tricks had not been exposed. But the guy in Beijing who facilitated the exposure of the Ele.me incident may have suffered an unreasonable disaster. I hope he is well!

Meituan Crowdsourcing Rider No. 3: He is about 30 years old. He said: "I am a crowdsourcing rider and I don't have these things. Maybe they only have them as special gifts!".

Note: Crowdsourcing is a relatively fragmented form of work. Delivery riders have greater freedom to decide their own working hours. However, accordingly, if they join during the food delivery peak period, or the working hours are not long enough, For example, if you work for more than ten hours, your income may be lower. We are all riders, and people are different

After a quick understanding (although it may be very one-sided), I feel that the group differences among food delivery riders are very big. Some food delivery riders have high family pressure and want to make more money, so they will be attracted by the high subsidies to stay during the New Year; but some people still choose to go home for the New Year. The intensity of rewards set by different platforms and the reward rules set for different categories of food delivery riders are also quite different.

The life experiences of food delivery riders are also very different, and they have worked in different industries. In the experience of delivering food, there are some similar experiences, but some are also different: No. 1 Meituan delivery rider and No. 2 Ele.me are born in 2000 and are younger. They feel that the job of delivering food has its advantages. It’s a small place, but I really feel the hard work inside. Meituan crowdsourcing rider No. 3 is older. Although he did not say it explicitly, he implicitly said in his words, "I have been through ups and downs. It is quite easy to deliver food!"

The delivery rider who picked up the meal, photo by the author, the same below

The Ele.me delivery rider on the 1st feels that the current income is not bad, but the time of running the order every day is not sure. Sometimes I am lucky enough to earn around 300 yuan after running for more than 10 hours; sometimes I still have less than 200 yuan after running for more than 12 hours. It all depends on how many orders the system dispatches. He can earn about 8,000 yuan a month, which is higher than his previous job income. He used to work in customer service, and his salary was quite low. At high levels, he could earn 6,000 yuan a month.

Meituan’s system has a very complex grading system. Generally speaking, the longer a rider takes to run an order, including daily working hours and previous historical working hours, the lower the overtime rate and negative customer reviews. If the rate is low, orders will be dispatched first, but the algorithm itself is not transparent. If the algorithm is modified, the rider may not know exactly where the problem lies.

During lunch and dinner, he has to deliver 6 orders in about an hour. This hour includes going to the store to pick up the food, waiting for the food, and then delivering it to each customer. In such a tense time, it would be very miserable if the guests lived in a community where they could not wait for a long time for the elevator, or where electric vehicles were not allowed to enter.

He is most afraid of encountering "abnormal" situations, such as bad weather, which makes delivery difficult; product), which will affect a series of subsequent orders, all of which face timeout issues. Even if the card meal order can be exempted from overtime penalties (sometimes the platform will not let you directly deduct money based on overtime), subsequent affected orders may not be exempted from penalties. Customers and the platform will not consider humanely because the previous order has timed out. If a customer complains or leaves a negative review, 100 will be deducted, which makes no sense. It is also very troublesome if the customer does not answer the phone or fills in the wrong address. These "abnormalities" may occur every day.

Ele.me’s special delivery rider on No. 2 had an income of nearly 6,000 yuan last month, which feels pretty good. He feels that compared with going to the factory, it is better to go for takeout.

He said something that left a deep impression on me, which was roughly "When I entered the factory, I felt that time passed so slowly, and I hoped that he would go faster; when I was delivering food, I was afraid that time would pass too fast, and I thought about who would tell him to go slower. ". I understand that the "slow" in this sentence means that the work in the factory is very boring, waiting for time to pass; while the time for delivering food is very tight, and you need to rush to deliver the order on time. At the end of the chat, he also said that this job is “really tiring” and he can’t stop because there are so few people on Ele.me (it seems that there are fewer and fewer riders on Ele.me now), and what others used to do was The sheets were all in his hands, and he felt a little exhausted.

Meituan Crowdsourcing Rider No. 3 once opened a store of his own and suffered losses, and also ran a takeout shop. Later, the takeout shop did not do well, so he went out to do takeout after it closed, as a Transition stage. He once participated in this system as the "merchant" at the other end of the takeout business. He complained loudly, saying that it was very hard to run a takeout shop. Once he got busy, he couldn't stop and he couldn't make any money. He especially complained about the preferential activities that Meituan forces merchants to participate in. If you participate in some discounts or discounts, the merchants have to pay for it themselves. If you participate, you will have traffic, but you will not make any money; if you do not participate, Meituan will The group does not provide traffic. The store is ranked low and customers cannot find it at all. Without traffic, this store is equivalent to slowly dying.

After experiencing the hardships of starting a business, this rider has a very Buddhist approach to food delivery. Crowdsourcing itself is a relatively free category. He sometimes gets up as early as eight or nine in the morning to run. Sometimes I would go out after 11 o'clock to run during the afternoon rush hour, and then sometimes I would rest in the afternoon, and then go out again in the evening to run around 11 o'clock. His income last month was about three to four thousand yuan, which he was satisfied with. He said that he usually runs to places nearby, because he is very familiar with the area, so he knows where the address is and how to get there at a glance, without having to worry too much, so he can run very comfortably. If you want to go to some unfamiliar places and cannot find the way, it will be more difficult.

Through chatting, they transformed from tools into people

After chatting with the riders for a few hours in the afternoon, I felt that the differences among the riders were quite large. Some riders have family pressure and need to make more money. They run 14-16 hours a day and may earn more than 10,000 yuan a month, but most people (if they run full-time) do not have this level. In places like Guangzhou, Maybe 5,000-8,000. Compared to working in a factory or entering some low-wage service industries, you can still earn a little more by running takeaways for the same working hours. But this little bit may be due to their high risk, physical labor, and lack of security.

This group contains people with various life experiences, younger and older; those who run very seriously and do not miss any money-making orders; I am very Buddhist and I am taking this job as a temporary transition. The previous article "Riders Trapped in the System" mentioned riders trapped in the system. During the Spring Festival, we also saw the news about the New Year subsidies for Ele.me routine riders, and we also saw the powerlessness of riders when faced with the giant system. This kind of How can a hugely differentiated group of riders face some unreasonable rules imposed by the platform and system?

I saw someone on Weibo saying that it makes no sense to help riders run orders in this way, and it helps the platform continue to be arrogant. I actually didn’t think too much about it, and felt that many things didn’t need to be so high-profile. In the words of an Ele.me rider, “Of course I’m happy (you come to pick up the meal). Don’t rush and you’ll get the money.” Through my In one small step, we step out from the daily path together, reflect on our own lives, and see the lives of others. For me, this is a process of passion, empathy, and understanding. This process can help me transform them from the thin and stereotyped image described by the media into living flesh-and-blood people.