On February 24, the Ministry of transport held a regular press conference in February. Wang Xiuchun, deputy director of the transportation service department of the Ministry of transport, said that the Ministry of transport will implement the new transportation business platform and draw enterprises into “Sunshine Action”.
It is reported that the “Sunshine Action” focuses on the two fields of online car hailing and new business forms of road freight, requires platform enterprises to disclose pricing rules to the public, reasonably set the upper limit of proportion and publish it publicly.
The interviewed experts said that in the new employment relationship between drivers built by the Internet platform, the status of the platform and drivers is naturally unequal, and the opaque algorithm exacerbates this trend, which is not conducive to the healthy and sustainable development of the industry. “Sunshine Action” will promote the transparency of platform operation and protect drivers’ right to labor remuneration.
real time display of proportion of each order
With the vigorous development of new forms of transportation, the scale of employees continues to expand. Taking online car Hailing drivers as an example, according to the data of the national online car Hailing supervision information interaction platform, as of January 31, 2022, a total of 3.988 million online car Hailing driver licenses had been issued, with 902000 new drivers holding licenses compared with last year.
Wang Xiuchun pointed out that in recent years, problems such as high labor intensity, long working hours, weak sense of professional belonging and inadequate protection of rights and interests have become increasingly prominent. Therefore, in 2021, the Ministry of transport, together with many departments, issued the opinions on strengthening the protection of the rights and interests of employees in the new format of transportation and the opinions on strengthening the protection of the rights and interests of truck drivers, which made arrangements for improving the benefit distribution mechanism of the platform and employees and regulating the business behavior of platform enterprises.
“Platform pumping is related to the labor remuneration of employees and is closely related to the vital interests of employees.” Wang Xiuchun said that according to the provisions of the above two documents, in order to further standardize the business behavior of platform enterprises and effectively protect the legitimate rights and interests of employees, the Ministry of transport will implement the “Sunshine Action” of platform enterprises with new transportation formats.
It is reported that “Sunshine Action” focuses on two areas: online car hailing and new business forms of road freight. In terms of online car hailing, major online car Hailing platform companies will be urged to disclose pricing rules to the public, reasonably set the upper limit of the proportion of the platform and publish it publicly, and display the proportion of each order in real time at the driver’s end. In terms of road freight, we will urge major new road freight platform companies to disclose pricing rules to the public, reasonably set the order charging amount or proportional upper limit, or membership fee upper limit of the platform, and publish them to the public.
Liu Jinrui, a researcher at the Institute of rule of law of China law society, told the 21st Century Business Herald that this action is a specific measure to continue to implement the above two documents, mainly to protect the legitimate rights and interests of practitioners of the new transportation business platform, such as the right to know and the right to supervision.
The construction of a new platform for the employment of lawyers in Shanghai has exacerbated the inequality between the law firm and Shanghai Aerospace law firm. The action carried out by the Ministry of transport shows that the relevant national departments have noticed that the black box caused by this algorithm has seriously affected social equity, and hope to improve drivers’ understanding of their salary structure through public random inspection algorithm. It is also a perfection of Article 20 of the regulations on the administration of Internet information service algorithm recommendation, which will be implemented soon.
“Drivers are the core resources of the online car Hailing platform. For a long time, the phenomenon of opaque and arbitrary charging of online car hailing and pumping has been serious, which has had a negative impact on the rights and interests of drivers and is not conducive to the healthy and sustainable development of the industry. Action sunshine will promote the transparency of platform operation and protect the right to labor remuneration of online car Hailing drivers.” Lou Yu, Professor of the school of civil and commercial economic law of China University of political science and law and director of the Institute of social law, said.
Lou Yu analyzed that under this rule, drivers can understand the composition of each single income in real time, which is convenient for subsequent rights protection; At the same time, it is also convenient for passengers and the public to understand the income composition of the platform and drivers and avoid the phenomenon of “killing and ripening” of big data.
further refine the work deployment
Wang Xiuchun said that in the next step, the Ministry of transport will closely focus on the objectives and tasks determined by people’s livelihood and further refine the work deployment to ensure practical results.
Focus on three aspects. First, formulate the implementation plan. Some time ago, the Ministry of transport docked with the competent departments of major cities and major platform enterprises to deploy the practical work of people’s livelihood. Major cities and major platform enterprises responded positively and are refining and formulating their own specific implementation plans as required. Second, the organization is advancing in an orderly manner. Urge major platform enterprises to scientifically and reasonably set pricing rules, draw proportion and upper limit of membership fee, accelerate the improvement of software functions, and realize the requirements of real-time display of draw proportion. Third, the Ministry of transport will also strengthen tracking and supervision. Continuously track and master the progress of target tasks, regularly carry out work scheduling, ensure the completion of various target tasks, and spare no effort to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of employees.
For platform enterprises, what are the challenges of implementing relevant regulations? In Liu Jinrui’s view, the technical problems involved in “real-time display” may be the difficulty of enterprise implementation.
However, Lou Yu believes that platform enterprises should not have technical challenges, but may involve business secrets in enterprise operation. Therefore, the detailed rules for the implementation of the policy need to be further discussed when it is implemented in various places, so as to fully take into account the interests of platforms, drivers and passengers.
“Enterprises need to upgrade their network system and management structure in an all-round way to adapt to the era of algorithm supervision. This not only needs to improve the transparency and timeliness of the pumping mechanism, but also needs to establish corresponding internal review and safety evaluation mechanisms, and establish a personal rights and interests protection mechanism including the protection of drivers.” Shi Yuhang said.
Gu DASONG, executive director of the transportation rule of law and development research center of Southeast University, said that at present, the exploration of the Ministry of transportation reflects its new informatization regulation mode of new business governance. The operation rules of the platform can be further studied to clarify the enterprise scheduling costs, subsidies and rewards and other operation factors included in the pumping. In fact, one of the purposes of supervision is to protect the labor rights and interests of drivers. Perhaps we can have more problem-solving ideas, put the anchor point of information regulation on the average daily wage or hourly wage of drivers, and show the degree of protection of the platform operation strategy to the basic rights and interests of drivers by comparing with other relevant industries or minimum wage standards.
Many experts believe that for the governance of new business platform enterprises and employees in the field of transportation in the future, in addition to the proportion and pricing rules, we need to continue to make efforts in the fields of social insurance and so on.
“For some time to come, the important content is the protection of the rights and interests of workers in new formats, including how employees in new formats participate in social insurance.” Liu Jinrui said.
Lou Yu believes that platform economy and platform employment are new things. After the exploration in the past few years, it will enter a new period of standardized development of platform and protection of workers’ rights and interests in new formats in the future. In the future, we can continue to explore the system of “online contract workers” joining trade unions, carry out collective negotiation on working conditions and treatment, and determine reasonable income and remuneration standards matching decent work.
