3 minutes to tell you why takeaway riders are so difficult

This year's takeaway rider is too difficult! If you want to be cute, you can draw, and you have to be a scholar in the college entrance examination. What's more terrible is that you have to speed, go the wrong way, and even run red lights. Takeaway riders who come and go in the wind and rain are indispensable partners in your 996 working life. However, what you didn't expect is that the rider is in danger of dying at any time on the way to deliver you meals. In the first half of 2017, data from the Traffic Police Corps of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau showed that, on average, one takeaway rider was injured or killed every 2.5 days in Shanghai. In the same year, within 3 months in Shenzhen, 12 delivery riders were injured or killed. At the same time, due to platform squeeze, there have been numerous incidents of takeaway riders going on strike to defend their rights. The injustice has the head and the debt has the owner, why should the rider suffer so much?

1. The system that eats time

Last year, an article titled "Delivery Riders Trapped in the System" aroused heated discussions on the Internet. The article explained in detail how the algorithmic rules of the food delivery platform system govern the riders' labor step by step. On the one hand, the system continues to swallow the delivery time of riders. The longest delivery time for 3 kilometers has been reduced from 1 hour in 2016 to 45 minutes in 2017, and then 38 minutes in 2018, until it is shortened to less than 30 minutes. On the other hand, the system has set up a quantitative reward and punishment mechanism to force riders to obey the rules of the algorithm. Although the higher the punctuality rate, the higher the level, the higher the reward income, but the overtime and bad reviews mean severe punishment. One order only earns four or five yuan, and half of it will be deducted for an overtime order. If the overtime is too long, not only will the delivery fee be deducted, but another day or two of wages will be deducted. In addition to this, there are navigation that only seeks efficiency but not safety, and cameras that check the appearance at any time. Dare not to be slow, not to be slow, the rider fell into the fear of being dominated by the algorithm.

Second, the invisible platform company

On the surface, it is the cold algorithm that is inhuman. However, the food delivery platform and corporate capital behind it are quietly and invisible. Capital pursues profitability, and the platform has designed algorithm rules that put efficiency first. The delivery time is shortened, users are anxious to eat, and merchants can’t make it in time to cook. Finally, the delivery time is over. Users complain about riders, riders blame merchants, merchants complain about users, and takeaway platforms transfer conflicts to Among users, merchants and riders, they are doing their own thing. Not only that, the platform also dumped the employment relationship to a third party. The labor relationship for the riders was not established directly with the platform, but was transferred to an outsourced agent, and the contract signed was not necessarily a formal labor contract. There are other contracts of all kinds. If something happens to the rider, the platform can get away with a single trick.

3. The leek cutting system of knocking the bone and sucking the marrow

In recent years, Internet companies’ sassy operations have become commonplace. From a certain group of hungry to a certain drop of a lot, from takeaway riders to taxi drivers to programmer trainees, tragedies of sudden suicide and traffic accidents have occurred frequently. All sentient beings are running around for a living, but at the cost of their lives. Capital is constantly pursuing accumulation and expansion, and companies are constantly pursuing profit maximization under the pressure of the capital market, so the migrant workers at the bottom of the food chain are constantly being harvested and squeezed. In this larger and invisible game system, you, like the delivery riders, are treated as tool NPCs, allowing real players to harvest gold coins. However, people are not tools after all. Freedom, equality, justice, and the rule of law are values at the social level. In addition to calling for legal and social policy protection, the voices of individuals and even groups should still be heard. When the little brother in Shenyang received 253 orders and clicked to deliver them in place, this small resistance was already the most angry cry, and this cry was precisely the most real appeal of our migrant workers.

This is the majority office, see you in the next issue.

References:

Character "Takeaway rider, trapped in the system"

Yu Shengzhi "Bypassed Labor Laws: The History of Food Delivery Platforms and the Changes in the Labor Relations of Riders | College Students Friends Who Are Riders ②"