On the Legal Protection of Income-related Rights and Interests of Platform Practitioners

Zhao Hongmei

doi:doi:10.16538/j.cnki.jsufe.2021.05.009

Summary

The so-called “platform practitioner”（referred to as “practitioner”）is relying on the platform employment to provide consumer services. The legal protection of the rights and interests of practitioners in the platform employment has become a key field and a hot topic in China’s social law research. However, the existing research focuses on the legal identity of practitioners and the legal protection path of practitioners closely related to this, and the legal protection of income-related rights of practitioners is very weak. Behind the bright highlights of practitioners’ income is the lack of legal protection of their income-related rights and interests. Due to the weakening of economic attributes brought by the means of production, and the weakening of personality and organization attributes on the whole, most of them are difficult to be identified as the legal relations between workers and their platform enterprises and relevant partners are mostly difficult to be identified as labor relations. Practitioners’ own means of production has an important impact on the attributes, composition, calculation and information notification of their income. To realize the legal protection of income-related rights and interests of practitioners, it is not appropriate to apply the existing labor law of anti-arrears and anti-improper deduction, minimum wage and piecework wage, overtime pay and paid leave, and other relevant systems. The following systems should be constructed in accordance with the special laws of platform employment: First, introduce a bank deposit mechanism for practitioners’ withdrawal funds, establish an early warning mechanism for practitioners’ withdrawal obstacles, and establish a priority repayment mechanism for platform enterprises and relevant partners to default in withdrawal funds; formulate model texts of industry platform agreements and regulations, pilot, implement and constantly improve the final promotion and application, or establish platform agreements and supervision committees to jointly put forward review opinions and supervise the implementation of the formulation, modification, performance and improvement of specific platform agreements and rules. Second, the competent labor administrative department under the State Council should organize the industrial（industry）trade union and the platform trade association or the industry platform enterprises on behalf of the three parties to jointly formulate the minimum income standard for the practitioners of the industry measurable units（such as each unit or each kilometer）, namely the income benchmark. Third, compel platform enterprises to strictly limit the maximum number of daily orders practitioners receiving through technical control measures to reduce their working hours and limit their maximum daily online time; guide and promote practitioners to take their holidays on weekends and legal holidays by means of legal regulations and market regulations.