At present, the employment conditions of delivery workers in the platform economy do not meet the requirements of “achieving more sufficient employment of higher quality” proposed in the report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. According to Marx’s surplus value theory and ideas on wage labor, the reasons why delivery workers fall into relative poverty can be summarized as follows: the substantial subordination of delivery workers to delivery platform enterprises, the autocratic management of delivery platform enterprises to delivery workers, and the reverse change of labor efficiency and piece rate wage of the delivery workers. This analysis framework also provides theoretical support for clarifying the employment relationship between delivery platform enterprises and delivery workers. However, in reality, delivery platform enterprises deliberately blur the identity of delivery workers as wage laborers, in which the normalization of overwork, “rationalization” of labor risks, and mobility of labor conflicts become the new features of delivery workers. Therefore, the key to employment governance of delivery platform enterprises is to make clear the employment relationship between delivery platform enterprises and delivery workers. On this basis, it is also necessary to improve the matching degree between labor intensity and wages, strengthen occupational safety protection, and improve the conflict resolution mechanism, so as to promote the internal unity of the high-quality development of delivery platform enterprises and the high-quality employment of delivery workers.

Editor: Zhong Yao、Zheng Yifan

From:Teaching and Research.2023.No.1.