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Suppose you see a person on a scooter (xe hẩy), carrying a box of take-out lunch, dressed in the yellow livery of Meituan or Ele.me blue. Who does this driver work for?

It’s a hard question — so hard, in fact, that a legal aid nonprofit spent two years researching it. They found that China’s gig economy (nền kinh tế chia sẻ) workers are managed through a labyrinth (mê hồn trận, mê cung) of cross-cutting contracting companies and jurisdictions that leaves them with no boss to sue.

When Xu Miao and Chen Xinyi presented their team's findings at a TED Talk-like event in Beijing Sunday, they set off a national conversation about labor rights in the gig economy.

In China, and around the world, traditional labor relationships (mối quan hệ lao động truyền thống) are being challenged by online platforms (nền tảng công nghệ) that provide labor-intensive services like food deliveries or taxi rides without — to hear them tell it — employing any of the people who do the servicing.

Xu and Chen said that this employment relationship is first outsourced to a contracting company, and then further attenuated. Some drivers’ jobs were split up among as many as five employers; other drivers were registered as small businesses providing a service. This paper labyrinth got so complex the legal researchers called it a “dark web” of employment.

Bài trước: Sức ép quá