Many are vulnerable because of a lack of legal status
A food deliveryman suffered a fractured leg after being knocked down by an SUV last month in Bozhou, Anhui province. A domestic worker fell from a chair and broke her coccyx in Beijing last year. A driver with a car-hailing service died from overwork in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, in 2019.
Without work injury insurance, a crucial part of China's job securities package that provides compensation for workplace injuries or death and also pays funeral costs, casual workers who suffer injuries face an uphill struggle to claim compensation from clients or their de facto employers: the internet-based platforms or brick-and-mortar agencies for whom they work.
"I have heard of numerous cases of drivers dying suddenly as a result of exhaustion," said Zhao, an employee of a car-hailing company, who only gave his surname, as he inched forward in rush-hour traffic on a recent workday.
"In many cases, the platforms offer the families a sum of money due to public relations concerns, but that's not legal protection."
The 49-year-old and his peers want to be covered by government-backed work injury insurance, which provides generous payments for work-induced problems.
The sum is equivalent to 20 times the average national annual income in urban areas, which was about 42,000 yuan ($6,475) last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
The lackluster insurance coverage attracted the attention of Premier Li Keqiang during the annual gathering of the nation's highest legislative body in March.
He pledged to introduce a "social security subsidy mechanism" to provide basic protection for occupational injuries among the growing number of casual workers.
"Some people work several jobs and it's very hard," Li told a news conference in Beijing. "This (the improved mechanism) will facilitate development of a more healthy and stable flexible employment market."
Blind spot
Central government figures show that China has about 200 million casual workers, accounting for roughly one in every five employees.
Many don't have a traditional manager or employer as outlined by China's labor law, which came into force in 1994 and was last revised 11 years ago.
Last year, the courts heard about 540 cases involving work-related injuries to or deaths of casual workers, compared with just 44 in 2013, China Judgements Online, a database of court verdicts said.
However, in most cases the courts do not recognize labor or service ties－two major labor relations that are crucial benchmarks for deciding an employer's liability to pay compensation－between casual employees and job "matchmaking" platforms and agencies.
The rise in the number of such disputes in recent years has shone a light on the porous legal protections for casual workers, whose services have underpinned the rapid expansion of the country's "gig economy" in the shadow of the COVID-19 epidemic.
Last year, more than 84 million people offered casual services via the gig economy, according to an estimate by the State Information Center, an advisory body affiliated with the National Development and Reform Commission, the nation's top economic planner. In 2017, the number was 70 million.
Moreover, the epidemic-induced economic downturn has boosted employers' appetites for less-formal employment terms to reduce labor costs, making the closure of legal loopholes a more pressing issue, experts said.
A report last year by Renmin University of China said the proportion of Chinese companies that used informal workers had risen by 11 percent year-on-year to more than 55 percent. Almost 30 percent of those businesses said they will retain or expand the practice.
Evolution
The concept of informal employment emerged in the 1990s amid sweeping reforms targeting State-owned enterprises, which signaled an end to the country's decadeslong planned economy and led to a spike in the number of workers being laid off.
Those made redundant, usually people approaching retirement age, were encouraged to take casual jobs, such as domestic work, or to become self-employed small business owners.
The reforms gave rise to the "labor dispatch" practice, a new form of employment relations that allows employers to hire services from agencies to reduce labor costs.
The recent liftoff of the gig economy and app-based business models have further revolutionized labor relations.
Workers need only register with an online platform and verify their identity to start offering services as drivers and delivery personnel. They can also quit such jobs without fear of restrictions or penalties.
This flexibility was embraced by those who were made redundant or faced pay cuts at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak as a makeshift way of staying afloat financially.
Such jobs also offer more alternatives for rural migrants seeking better pay in cities, especially as previous generations of migrant workers manned assembly lines in coastal provinces, laid bricks on the edges of expanding cities or toiled in coal mines.
That flexibility has come at a cost, though.
"For a long time, there have been no rules to address the labor issues arising from the new forms of employment, such as internet-based jobs," said Li Na, a labor law researcher at the China University of Labor Relations. She added that the practice has created labor rights concerns and impeded the healthy development of China's rapid internet-based growth in employment opportunities.
Unlike full-time employees in factories or businesses, casual workers do not sign employment contracts with the platforms or agencies.
That leaves them without legal protection with regard to a minimum wage, working hours and workplace safety requirements.
The lack of formal contracts also infringes on job benefits. The financially vulnerable workers have no employer to share the cost of social security contributions, which usually come as part of a pricy package that contains the pension fund, health and unemployment insurance and access to a subsidized mortgage rate. The package can cost at least 10,000 yuan a year.
The lack of legal representation has affected people's willingness to buy such packages without help.
Lu Quan, secretary-general of the China Association of Social Security, said the two-track urban-rural hukou, or household registration system, also stops many out-of-towners from buying work injury or unemployment insurance in their city of employment, a mismatch common among migrant workers.
"These types of insurance are crucial for this group," he said.
Legal moves
The People's Republic of China first celebrated International Workers' Day 71 years ago. Since then, the country has made huge progress in protecting women's labor rights, cracking down on child labor and bolstering workplace safety.
In landmark moves, the labor law was introduced in 1994 and the labor contract law came into force in 2008, limiting overtime, setting a minimum wage and requiring that employees who are made redundant are given one month's pay for each year they have worked.
However, Li, the labor law researcher, said the flexibility of casual workers in terms of "work time, location, production means and tools" is straining the application of the labor law in the fast-evolving employment landscape.
In 2018, authorities started to overhaul labor rules that were made with traditional jobs in mind after members of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the country's top advisory body, called attention to the lack of work injury insurance coverage among casual employees.
Their proposals led the Ministry of Human Resources to revise the nation's Work Injury Insurance Regulation the following year, extending eligibility from traditional employees to tens of millions of casual workers.
Despite those efforts, 40 percent of urban workers are not covered by the insurance, and most of them are casual workers, according to Xinhua News Agency.
Premier Li's remarks have raised hopes of extending the work injury subsidy to the increasingly younger workers who are supercharging the burgeoning food delivery and car-hailing services.
That helps make insurance more affordable, both for individual workers and their de facto employers.
So far, subsidy programs have mainly targeted the "4050" group, casual workers in their 40s and 50s. The programs offer about 5,000 yuan reimbursement of their annual social security contributions over a period of five years.
After five years working as a driver full time, Zhao, from the central province of Henan, said he is worried about developing uremia and other kidney problems as a result of his packed schedule and local conditions.
"Drivers often have to forgo toilet breaks because of a lack of parking space, especially free parking space, he said.
Sun Fengyi contributed to this story.
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