DELIVERY and ride-hail apps provide conveniences that many residents in Singapore have become accustomed to ─ having food and goods delivered directly to our doorsteps, point-to-point pickup and drop-off to our desired destinations. It was not too long ago when food delivery and taxi rides were reserved for special occasions. The acceptance of these everyday conveniences as part of our daily routines has been accelerated by the sheer affordability of platform services. Today, platform workers do not have access to employee-related benefits such as Central Provident Fund contributions and work injury compensation insurance.

Plying the road alongside these platform workers are similar workers, such as delivery employees of logistics companies or food establishments. Their job scope – transporting items or passengers from point-to-point – is similar; so are their job risks, namely the inherent risks of being on the road for extended periods of time. The similarities do not end here.

Service providers, whether platform companies or employers, are in the business of delivering their services efficiently and at the quality promised to consumers, while trying to turn a profit. To do so, they must be able to assign jobs and direct how they are carried out at an acceptable cost. In conventional jobs, employees would be told what to do, how and when to complete the job, and must fulfil fixed working hours. They would also be assessed on how well they perform assigned tasks, which may then affect their pay. In a platform work context, a platform company pushes jobs to platform workers, accompanied by targets around duration or required travel routes. When a delivery rider is given a job on a delivery app to pick up food at a nearby mall, he must accept it and complete the delivery within a time frame, for a non-negotiable fee that is capped by the platform. He could reject the job if it was out of the way, but there could be penalties. He is also incentivised to keep working, especially during peak hours when fees are higher.

Many platform workers told the Advisory Committee on Platform Workers that they stepped away from the controls of employee work in pursuit of flexibility, such as flexible working hours. However, the same apps that are a gateway to convenience for consumers are the face of management controls for platform workers. The apps have replaced the human manager who assigns and reviews work. In the background, data and algorithms work hard to efficiently match jobs to platform workers, determine the fares, and monitor job performance.

Since platform workers and employees are both managed as workers albeit to different extents and in different ways, they should be given similar protections while at work. As such, the Advisory Committee on Platform Workers has made 12 recommendations to strengthen protections for platform workers in the areas of ensuring adequate financial protection in case of work injury, improving housing and retirement adequacy, and enhancing representation. The government has accepted these recommendations.

Currently, a delivery employee who sustains an accident while on a delivery would be compensated for medical expenses, income loss and lump sum compensation for permanent disability or death. These are mandatory protections provided by employers under the Work Injury Compensation Act (Wica). In contrast, a platform worker who gets into an accident while on a delivery might be able to claim from existing insurance purchased by platform companies. This typically includes personal accident insurance, which provides reimbursement for medical expenses and lump sum compensation for death or permanent disability; or prolonged medical leave insurance, which provides fixed pay-outs for longer periods of medical or hospitalisation leave. However, coverage is uneven across companies and oftentimes, at lower levels than what employees are entitled to under the Wica. For example, platform companies’ coverage for death or permanent disability is largely in the S$10,000 to S$30,000 range, compared to employees’ entitlement under Wica of up to S$289,000.

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In some cases, platform workers are left to fend for themselves when they are injured at work, such as by tapping on their MediSave account or claiming from their MediShield Life policy to cover large hospital bills. They bear the financial risk of getting injured on the job and receive no income in periods that they are unable to work. To address this disparity with employees, the committee recommended that platform companies provide platform workers with the same coverage of work injury compensation as employees.

The government has considered other approaches, such as leveraging existing personal accident and prolonged medical leave insurance. However, the committee had determined, in consultation with some insurers, that extending such insurance to the same level of coverage as Wica would lead to higher premiums for platform companies, because compensation is paid out regardless of whether an injury happened in the course of work. It would not be reasonable to expect platform companies to compensate for non-work-related injuries such as injures while running personal errands. These insurance policies also provide fixed payouts, which do not account for workers’ actual earnings like the Wica mechanism. It is also not reasonable for an injured platform worker who engages in platform work as their main job and another who does it for one hour a day, to be compensated the same amount.

Platform workers also shared with the advisory committee their experiences with perceived inefficient claims processes, lack of clarity on when claims would be admissible, as well as the need for a neutral party to step in when there were claims disagreements with insurers or platform companies. These issues cannot be resolved with a combination of off-the-shelf insurance policies but require finer regulation within a work injury compensation system. For these reasons, the committee recommended that the existing work injury compensation regime for employees be referenced for platform workers. Apart from standard compensation scopes and levels, the regime provides a ready model to operationalise work injury insurance for platform workers. This includes standard policy terms approved by the Ministry of Manpower for a common understanding of claims eligibility, established processes for reporting, standards for claims assessment and avenues for dispute resolution.

Implementation of the work injury compensation regime for platform workers will require further engagements with platform companies, platform workers and insurers, before commencement in the later part of 2024 at the earliest, as legislative changes would be required. Let us do right by platform workers by acknowledging the equal importance of life and health to all workers.

The writer is chairperson of the Advisory Committee on Platform Workers.