Beijing to Provide Deliverymen With 2,400 Dorm Rooms

By Edoardo Donati Fogliazza, February 27, 2019

You see them everyday, whizzing around the streets at top speeds to deliver everything from steamed buns to electronic devices straight to the doors of Beijingers. As China’s version of the gig economy has grown exponentially in recent years, deliverymen have become a regular presence in our lives (just ask the host of laowai who dressed as Ele.me delivery guys on Halloween).

But the army of workers (estimated to be around three million strong as of 2017) that constitutes the backbone of China’s ‘new retail’ sector has also been under the spotlight for its struggles to obtain fair and stable contracts, including insurance policies that fit its always-on-the-move work routine.

This prompted Beijing’s municipal government to release a set of nine measures last week, with the aim of protecting workers and sustaining the development of the budding industry. The new regulations had been drafted during a government meeting held on February 19 and presided over by Deputy Major Wang Hong, as reported by the Beijing Youth Daily.

Among the measures designed to improve gig-economy workers’ employment conditions is the promise of reserving 2,400 public dorm rooms, located in central parts of the city, to be rented by couriers. The measure was designed to tackle the scarcity of affordable housing for deliverymen (whose average income was estimated to be around RMB6,200 per month in 2017) near the distribution centers from which they start their deliveries every day.

The ‘service package’ also includes the introduction of an insurance policy ‘green channel’ for deliverymen in the city and stricter rules for employers, who will have to provide fair coverage to their personnel. The city government pledged to provide support to insurance companies to help them provide suitable packages for O2O retail businesses, according to China Youth Daily.

Other measures include the development of self-service stations, where consumers can retrieve parcels themselves through mobile applications, thus releasing some of the workload from the busy couriers.

Chinese President Xi Jinping talks with couriers in Qianmen, Beijing, just before the 2019 Chinese New Year holiday. Image via Ecns.cn

Worries about the kuaidi xiaoges’ working conditions have occupied a growing space in public opinion of late, their struggles with insurance packages highlighted in state media. Earlier this year, Chinese netizens began to question whether deliverymen deserved to be thanked for their services, raising a nationwide debate on their role in society under the hashtag #该不该跟外卖员说谢谢 ('Should we thank the deliverymen?'). Couriers working for online retail companies were among the Beijingers that Chinese President Xi Jinping met during an informal visit to downtown neighborhoods' residents just before the Chinese New Year festivities, a fact read by many as proof of the leadership’s interest in the new-sprung classes of workers in growing new sectors of the economy.

Beijing Youth Daily also reported figures from the Beijing Municipal Postal Administration showing that the delivery business volume reached 2.21 billion pieces in Beijing last year. 2017 saw a staggering 28 percent increase in online retail sales of goods in the country, for a total value of around RMB5.4 trillion, to which Beijing alone contributes for RMB514 billion, with an year-on-year growth rate of 11.9 percent, according the 2018 China Statistical Yearbook compiled by the China’s National Bureau of Statistics.

[Cover image via Xinhua]