Minister of Labor Hsu Ming-chun (許銘春) last week said that the relationship between delivery drivers and food delivery platforms is to be defined as an employment relationship.
Regarding the definition of employment relations, the two major food delivery platforms — Foodpanda and Uber Eats — have said that their relationship with their deliverers is one of having signed a service contract.
They have also said that they provide various kinds of insurance for their couriers, including mortality, third-party injury, disability, and third-party property insurance, as well as supercar accident and property loss insurance.
If a courier has a work-related traffic accident, these two companies have said that they would contact the courier’s family and provide the necessary assistance.
The experience of some other nations is that food delivery platforms have continual control over couriers’ work.
The platforms’ business principally consists of using the drivers to deliver food to consumers who have ordered it, and it is the platforms who know the locations of the restaurants involved and the directions that the drivers must follow to deliver the food.
Couriers should not have to travel over too wide a range. All their work is arranged by the staff who run the platform.
Couriers are not engaged in a supplementary job directed by the delivery platform company.
From the point of view of ordinary consumers who order take-out, they are directly dealing with the take-out delivery companies.
As the couriers’ work is the entirety of the delivery platforms’ external operations, the relationship between couriers and delivery platform companies can only be one of employment.
The important thing is that when a court of law decides whether deliverers and delivery platforms have an employment or a contractual relationship, it will deliver an opinion as to whether couriers are parties to an equal and independent contract.
Couriers are called upon to provide their delivery vehicles — in this case scooters — and bear the costs of maintaining, repairing and running them, as well as provide other equipment themselves.
This kind of arrangement arises from delivery platforms’ advantageous position.
However, couriers do not operate their own businesses or companies and do not act independently in the course of their work.
For example, they cannot drink water on the way to deliver food to consumers, lest a situation should arise where they eat some of the consumers’ food.
Ku Chen-yen is an assistant professor in Vanung University’s Department of Marketing and Logistics.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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