As part of the new forms of employment, delivery riders navigate through streets and alleys, persevering through all weather conditions, and have become an indispensable component of urban operations. Overall, enhancing the professional identity, social respect, and rights protection for these riders still requires collective societal effort. Transforming urban delivery into a visible, recognized, and growth-oriented new profession necessitates not only top-level policy design but also proactive exploration by platform companies.
Now, a new model has emerged to lead the professional development of riders in the industry. On May 17th, Taobao Deals held its inaugural City Rider Festival, announcing the launch of the "Orange Care Plan 2.0." This initiative significantly upgrades the occupational security and career development system for riders while honoring exemplary annual city riders with prestigious awards. Through substantial investment and robust measures, Taobao Deals is paving an upward growth path for riders—ensuring a safety net, making good deeds visible, rewarding effort, and fostering professional development. This continuous effort aims to establish urban delivery as a secure, growth-oriented, and dignified "developmental new profession."
As the platform economy expands and new business models flourish, the workforce engaged in new forms of employment continues to grow. These new forms provide more diverse career choices and offer crucial support for economic development and livelihood improvement. Achieving the development goal of high-quality, full employment requires not only creating more suitable job opportunities through new employment forms but also enhancing the quality of these jobs accordingly. The establishment of the City Rider Festival reflects platform companies' breakthroughs and innovations in addressing developmental challenges and signifies a deeper societal recognition of the labor value within new employment forms. When policies and market forces align, and workers in new employment forms enjoy better security and broader development prospects, being a city rider transcends being a mere delivery job; it becomes a new profession worthy of visibility, recognition, and growth.
In this context, the inaugural City Rider Festival, building on the recognition of outstanding national rider role models, introduced the "Orange Care Plan 2.0," outlining a clear path for standardized occupational security for city riders. Beyond promoting comprehensive social insurance subsidies, the plan ensures full coverage for all riders under the new occupational injury protection scheme. During extreme weather, it upgrades heatstroke and cold protection insurance for all riders, extending coverage duration, scenarios, and amounts. Emergency medical kits and blood pressure monitors are uniformly equipped in rider stations; high-quality mattresses are provided free of charge for rider apartments; the rider meal experience is optimized with "one-click ordering" and more substantial subsidies; "tap-to-open" access is popularized, with increased electricity subsidies, and in partnership with collaborators, a "5-minute accessible" battery swap service network is established across 76 key cities; special protections are introduced for groups such as riders with disabilities and female riders, featuring optimized dispatch systems and autonomous order selection. In addition to fair and supportive employment measures, female riders enjoy rights such as refusing heavy orders and canceling night orders without penalty, alongside protections like critical illness insurance and anti-harassment mechanisms. With the establishment of the "Orange Benefit Alliance," encompassing over 200,000 caring merchants, Taobao Deals collaborates with multiple parties to enhance rider rights and build a warm, sustainable ecosystem, promising a future worthy of greater anticipation.
The comprehensive upgrade to the "Orange Care Plan 2.0" represents a further enhancement of Taobao Deals' rider security system. Over the past year, the "Orange Care Plan" introduced the industry's first professional uniform, providing free updates for over a million riders; achieved nationwide coverage of pension and medical social insurance in directly operated cities for the first time, offering social insurance subsidies to all riders; established the inaugural "17th City Rider Day," cumulatively caring for over 4 million riders; incentivized nearly 200 riders for good deeds, with single rewards exceeding 120,000 yuan; assisted over 200 families facing serious illnesses; and supported nearly 300 riders in "pursuing dreams through education" with free university access. The transition from temporary safety nets to systematic safeguards reflects the platform company's ongoing efforts to shift the rider community from "flexible workers" to "institutionalized professional roles."
Simultaneously, these efforts further highlight the professional value of riders. This year, Taobao Deals saw a record number of city riders receiving national commendations. At the Rider Festival, outstanding riders—from honor role models and public service exemplars to service experts, safety pioneers, ace team leaders, instructors, and all-around pioneers—were awarded annual honors and significant rewards by Taobao Deals. This not only reshapes the professional image but also positively addresses societal misconceptions—the enhancement of professional value ultimately translates into upgraded service quality, fostering a virtuous cycle of industry development and social recognition.
In the long term, this represents a forward-looking occupational transformation aligned with societal needs, fully demonstrating the vision and responsibility of platform companies. All these measures can set an example for the food delivery industry and the broader service sector, serving as a pivot for reshaping industry competition, redefining labor relations, and promoting comprehensive human development. They also meticulously nurture the "orange care" in every journey, injecting new momentum into the thriving development of new service industries.
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