213: The local arbitration committee is too unruly!

Anping City in midsummer is actually very hot, which was also Zhou Yun’s direct feeling; although Jinghai is further south, Jinghai is not that hot.

According to Sun Yiling, her husband couldn't find a job after being laid off, so he had no choice but to prepare to become a delivery rider.

Then he saw a recruitment advertisement near his home looking for riders, so he went.

He had to get his own vehicle, uniform, and delivery box, which cost him a lot of money.

Many people are now aware of the situation; some stations' affiliated companies actually make money from these vehicles and uniforms, requiring riders to buy them as soon as they join.

And the delivery rider industry, to be honest, has a relatively high turnover rate, so in such circumstances, it really does make…

“Then my husband signed two agreements with some service company, called something like a Freelancer Cooperation Agreement, and I forgot the other one, but it’s at home.”

“After that, he worked every day; I don’t know how they calculated it, but he ran orders all based on system arrangements, and had to attend a meeting at the station once a week, with daily shift and online hour requirements.”

“Then suddenly one day, I was at work, and a police officer called me, saying my husband had collapsed, was found by someone who called the police, and then was taken to the hospital.”

“I rushed over, and they said he had severe heatstroke, and then he went into the ICU…”

“Lawyer Zhou, my husband is lying in a hospital bed, not dead yet, I certainly can’t give up on saving him, can I…?”

Zhou Yun waved his hand upon hearing this and said, “You did very well; there’s no problem at all. I generally understand the situation. After your husband was hospitalized, did anyone from that station or its affiliated company come to visit him?”

Sun Yiling shook her head and said, “No one came. Instead, his colleagues came and even left me a thousand yuan.”

“I also looked for their leaders, and their leaders said it was my husband’s own problem and had nothing to do with them. If I didn’t make a fuss, out of humanitarianism, they could give ten thousand yuan.”

“But if I insisted on arbitration or making a fuss, they wouldn’t give a single cent and told me to sue however I wanted.”

“Lawyer Zhou, it’s not that I insist on making a fuss or going to arbitration, but ten thousand yuan is useless. Our family still owes hundreds of thousands to the hospital. Ten thousand yuan, you know, we can’t agree to that.”

Sun Yiling started to cry at this point: “Now my relatives here are blaming me, saying that if I had given up then, it would have been fine. Why did I insist on treating him, knowing it wouldn’t work and still spending that wrongful money.”

“Now it’s all good, the person is gone, and the money is gone too.”

Zhou Yun waved his hand and said, “You don’t need to say all that. Now, I need the following materials: first, the labor arbitration award, then the agreement your husband signed with that company, then your husband’s Bank statement, and his salary records from the food delivery app.”

“Also, the hospital’s rescue and treatment records. If you don’t have them, I can retrieve them later.”

“Besides these, there are also the pieces of evidence you submitted for the previous labor arbitration, such as evidence of weekly meetings, work evidence, etc…”

He compiled a list of all the items and sent it to Sun Yiling, then they agreed to meet again in the afternoon.

The conversation ended, Sun Yiling went home, and Zhou Yun needed to find a place to stay.

For the convenience of future litigation, he chose to stay next to Changhua District Court; he didn't even need to take a taxi, he could just walk there.

Regarding the confirmation of labor relations, Zhou Yun was actually quite puzzled; according to his understanding, this was not particularly difficult.

Moreover, based on his experience, the Arbitration Committee and the Court are actually quite flexible in confirming labor relations.

How flexible? For new types of workers like food delivery riders, taking a certain platform as an example, dedicated delivery is easy to say. If one pays a little attention, for example, attending regular meetings, receiving orders from the station, or signing in, and collects these carefully, they can basically confirm a labor relationship with the outsourcing company affiliated with the station.

Of course, don’t even think about a certain platform; that’s simply impossible. Their system was developed by so many experts, you can’t expect to penetrate it.

It’s good enough if you can establish a connection with those service companies at the station.

The rest, like fast run and happy run, are a bit more complicated, difficult for individuals to do, and require more professional legal intervention.

Case examples also vary greatly by region; some can be recognized, while others are not.

Crowdsourcing, needless to say, is basically impossible to recognize as a labor relationship.

And the flexible part is that for rider types with significant disputes, like fast run and happy run, if you want to get double compensation for not signing a labor contract and severance pay, they generally won’t recognize a labor relationship.

Meaning, they won’t let you get money; wanting money is not allowed.

However, if you are seriously injured, or if death occurs, then even if your evidence is not so sufficient, the Court will say that you indeed have a labor relationship.

Why? Because the purpose of many such recognitions is to obtain work-related injury compensation.

See? This is the specific situation of law in practice; this is the embodiment of the essence of law. It protects a lower limit and maintains the most basic things.

The law is dead, people are alive. If a judge wants you to win, he has a hundred reasons to make you win.

So this is why some riders protect their rights themselves, and after checking cases for a long time, they find, “Holy cow, similar cases judged by the same Court are actually different…”

This is the reason, and no matter who investigates, there is no problem with this.

So, logically speaking, a labor relationship should actually be confirmable, but now they lost, which indicates that the local Arbitration Committee is a bit unconventional.

Of course, it’s also possible that the arbitration officer who handled the arbitration lacks experience and doesn’t understand these rules.

Time quickly passed to the afternoon. Zhou Yun received the relevant materials from Sun Yiling and began to review them after returning to the hotel.

The first thing he looked at was the arbitration award. After a quick read, Zhou Yun understood that the arbitrator who made the award was likely inexperienced and somewhat mechanical.

He believed that there was no labor relationship between Sun Yiling’s husband, Duan Liwei, and Hexi Province Langxin Service Company, on the grounds that Duan Liwei’s salary was paid by another company in Hexi Province.

For labor relationship confirmation, there is a necessary item, which is “engaging in remunerated labor arranged by the employing unit.”

However, the Arbitration Committee believed that although Duan Liwei attended weekly meetings at the station, he took orders through an APP, and all of these were determined by the system. He earned more for more work and less for less work, had no basic salary, and his salary was not paid by this service company.

Therefore, there was no management between the two parties, and thus no labor relationship existed.

On the surface, it seems reasonable. The employing unit’s management of the laborer is based on “money.”

Since the other party pays, one must listen to them.

Now, the money is not paid by this company, and order taking and assessments are all done by the system, so how can you say there is a labor relationship? Certainly not.

To be honest, Zhou Yun had seen too many such situations in his previous life, and the tricks played by those companies in his previous life were even more numerous.

For example, the classic “individual industrial and commercial household” from a few years ago, where riders were made to register as individual industrial and commercial households and then sign “project subcontracting agreements,” trying every means to circumvent…

Compared to that, this trick is not as complicated, but it was also designed by professionals.

Since that’s the case, he would do it himself.

However, the local Arbitration Committee is a bit unconventional, so he also had to be wary of the local Court. What if the Court is also unconventional?