| With the vast popularity of smart terminals and the iterative development of digital technology,the platform economy is developing rapidly in China.Relying on digital platforms,workers are able to break through the constraints of time and space,utilise the digital terminals in their hands to associate with digital platforms and come to the digital platforms to select or submit tasks.This kind of workers’ group formed by taking advantage of the Internet’s characteristics of transferability,openness and sharing is called the new form of employment workers,which is characterised by de-organisation,de-centralisation,and de-labour relations,and is drastically growing.However,the breakthrough in the form of employment also means that this group has lost the protection of the old legal system.In recent years,the legal rights and interests of this group have been increasingly reported in the media.Concurrently,more and more studies have been conducted on this group amongst academia,and the call for the protection of their legitimate rights and interests has become even louder.Under a circumstance as such,the author has landed upon the decision to choose workplace injury insurance as the direction of research,in an attempt to analyse the current game dilemma between the government and platform enterprises regarding the provision of workplace injury protection for workers in new employment forms,and to provide certain thoughts and ideas for future regulation.In response to these matters,this paper unfolds the following research work.Firstly,the importance of workers’ compensation insurance for new forms of employment is noted in the significance of the study.Unlike pension insurance and medical insurance,work injury insurance does not provide access to individual contributions.This is because under the current legal system in China,work injury insurance is closely linked to the labour relationship and is paid by the employer for the workers who have a labour relationship.Yet,the new forms of employment do not now meet the conditions for the current recognition of labour relations;hence,the rights and interests of this group of workers are now excluded from the social security system and there is no possibility of access.There is an urgent need to seek protection for the rights and interests of this group.Welfare economics,Keynesian economics,Marxian political economy and risk society theory have also argued for the significance of workplace injury protection from various perspectives,for instance: welfare economics argues that distribution promotes the maximisation of social welfare;Keynesian economics remarks that the provision of social security is a powerful stimulus to effective demand across society;Marxian political economy notes that workplace injury insurance ensures the reproduction of labour;and risk society theory believes the prevention of systemic risk requires the apportionment of workers’ compensation insurance.Then,summarising and sorting out the history of the development of new forms of employment,it is found that the problem of work injury protection has been around for a long time,before the emergence of new forms of employment,labour dispatchers,who were outside labour relations,also had this problem.The relevant authorities have since remedied this problem by providing a degree of cover for labour dispatchers.In the digital age,platform companies have adopted algorithms and dominant market positions to completely "sugar-coat" their legal relationships with new employment forms as civil legal relationships protected by civil law,leaving new employment forms unattached to the work injury insurance system.Encountering reality,this paper tries to analyse the causes from three perspectives:the platform companies,the new employment forms,and the government.Subsequent to analysis,it can be found that for platform enterprises,as a rational market player aiming at profit,it is optimal to take advantage of the loopholes in the current legal system to make profit,and the high cost also forces platform enterprises to pass on this cost.In addition,after years of development and annexation,platform enterprises have already satisfied the characteristics of monopolistic enterprises,which will inevitably give rise to moral risks.The reason why the rights and interests of employees in new employment forms have been missing for long is,on the one hand,due to their own lack of voice in the employment market;on the other hand,under the influence of selfinterest mentality and the discrimination of the existing system,this group is not willing to participate in the work injury insurance system and prefers to procure timely income or preventive savings.From the government’s point of view,there are compelling reasons for neglecting the rights and interests of workers in new forms of employment.Foremost,the higher cost may further trigger the bankruptcies among certain local enterprises.Secondly,the inclusion of new workers in a short period of time may lead to a decline in the quality of work injury insurance,which is unfair to those who are already participating.Additionally,without a proper conduction,a dual-track system in the recognition of labour relations may be generated,which may continue to worsen the employment conditions.However,the mission of common prosperity requires the government to fight for the rights and interests of work injury for the new employment form workers.Also,the government is supposed to act as the agent of this group to combat the platform enterprises.This paper employs a signalling model to derive the game process between the government and the platform companies on whether to provide work injury rights to the new employment forms.The analysis reveals that to achieve the ideal equilibrium,the government needs to establish a comprehensive legal system to enrich its policy toolbox,and then adjust through the feedback of platform enterprises on the policy tools,so as to achieve the purpose of guiding the platform enterprises.The evolutionary game is then applied as an analytical tool to derive the evolutionary process of the government’s construction of the relevant legal system,to figure out the conditions for reaching each stable evolutionary strategy,and to implement simulations using MATLAB to analyse the impact of each factor on the strategic choices of both parties involved.A three-party evolutionary game model of the government,platform enterprises and new employment practitioners is constructed for the future regulatory model by adding new employment practitioners to it.The evolutionary paths and stability strategies of the three parties are analysed,with a view to finding an evolutionary solution to regulate the healthy development of new employment patterns and to guarantee the realisation of the rights and interests of new employment pattern practitioners in terms of work injury,where the verification of the authenticity will be tested through MATLAB.Concluding: firstly,the size of the loss caused by the penalty mechanism is a decisive factor for the platform companies as the rational to judge whether to provide workplace injury protection for the new employment forms.Nevertheless,any punitive measure should have a legal backing and needs to be framed within a reasonable,legal,and stable range.Disorderly punishment will infinitely magnify the negative effects and eventually lead to mutual distrust and termination of the game.Therefore,both government and platform enterprises should proactively participate in legislative game to express respective demands until the consensus is reached.Moreover,in the legislative game between the government and platform enterprises,the initial willingness of the government’s strategic choice has a positive impact on the strategic choice of platform enterprises,and the government attaches more importance to the benefits that can be brought by active regulation in the legislative game,while platform enterprises attach more importance to the expected illegal benefits.Finally,according to the three-way evolutionary game model,in the future regulatory model,the government fears that job losses will affect social stability,while platform firms see the effective scope of government regulation as a key factor,as it relates to the size of the benefits that platform firms can illegally capture from new employment forms,while new employment forms are more concerned with the difference between current income and the level of industrial and commercial protection.In this regard,this paper proposes two recommendations: on the one hand,to strengthen the legal basis,refine the reward and punishment mechanisms and enrich the government policy tools;on the other hand,to strengthen the regulation and adjust the policies to the factors valued by each participant in order to produce a favourable and stable evolutionary strategy.In summary,this article proposes the following suggestions: firstly,consolidate the legal foundation,refine the reward and punishment mechanism,and enrich government policy tools;Secondly,before establishing a sound legal protection system,use judicial precedents for transition;Thirdly,introduce and design commercial insurance that is suitable for the new employment form of employees,providing supplementary protection for this group. |
