More gig workers recognized as employees

Members of Rider Union, Korea's first union for food delivery workers, demand protection of their labor rights in front of the National Assembly, Seoul, on May 1 Labor Day. / Yonhap

Food delivery workers lead revolt against nation's gig economy

By Lee Suh-yoon

For Park Jung-hoon, 34, working for food delivery platforms was like a survival game.

Whether it was for local food delivery apps or Uber Eats, which pulled out of the Korean market recently due to competition from homegrown players, Park was considered a freelancer. This made him self-sufficient in the eyes of the law, despite the job being his full-time occupation and sole source of income under an unnegotiable payment scheme. His non-employee status barred him from the most basic protections, including those related to working hours and minimum wage. He also had to pay for his own motorcycle, fuel and insurance.

"It's an arrangement where the delivery worker bears all the responsibility," Park said. "I was always anxious on the job, knowing I would be held accountable for any costs resulting from delays or accidents."

Park is one of tens of thousands of food delivery workers lassoed into the gig economy in Korea, the world's fourth-largest market for online food delivery.

In May, Park, a former member of a labor rights coalition for young part-time workers, and other food delivery workers formed the Rider Union. On Nov. 18, Seoul Metropolitan Government granted it legal status ― a first for a platform workers' union.

"Referring to previous court or administrative decisions, we concluded there was sufficient reason to see Rider Union members as formal employees of food delivery app providers," Jung Sang-dae, a city official, said in a phone interview. "The platform firms use a pre-set contract to unilaterally impose a specific profit-sharing scheme on the delivery workers, whose labor is crucial to the companies' business model. From a holistic view, we can see there is an economic, systematic and subordinate relationship between the platforms and delivery workers."

With its new status, Rider Union can formally request that food delivery app providers partake in labor negotiations. The legal status, however, is applied only to those working in Seoul, and nationwide recognition requires approval by the Ministry of Employment and Labor.

Rider Union members were not the only ones to successfully challenge their non-employee status recently. Last month, the labor ministry recognized five delivery workers of Yogiyo, a food delivery app provider, as regular employees who should be granted overtime pay. The administrative decisions follow similar trends overseas. California passed a new law recently that would reclassify many gig workers as employees. The EU also introduced new laws protecting gig workers last April.

IT policy professor Lee Kwang-suk of Seoul National University of Science and Technology said the recent developments were natural results considering the social effects of the gig economy.

"The platform economy grew by absorbing the unemployed in the economic recession. It broke all existing rules on employment contracts and classified everyone as independent contractors, actively bypassing basic labor protection laws," Lee said. "How this gig economy leads to precarious forms of labor is shared widely in our social discourse now, leading to the recent institutional measures."

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