On September 28, the seventh lecture of “2021 Series of Lectures on Global Labor Market Flexibilization and Digital Economy Employment Regulation”, hosted by the CULR and co-organized by the Labor Relations Branch of Chinese Association of Human Resource Development, was held online. Dr. Ian Greer, Director of the Joint Laboratory of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University in the United States, was invited as the keynote speaker and delivered a presentation titled "Can Gig Workers Receive Unemployment Benefits? A Case Study of the United States During the Pandemic". Fu Deyin, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee and President of the CULR, attended the lecture, with more than 190 experts, scholars, and students from inside and outside the CULR listening online.

President Fu Deyin pointed out that flexible employment is developing rapidly in China, bringing many new situations and issues. He sincerely hopes to gain inspiration and learn from Dr. Ian Greer's report, and maintain good academic exchange relations between the CULR and Cornell University of the United States.

During the lecture, Dr. Ian Greer used the changes in the unemployment rate, labor market supply, and labor force participation rate of the working-age population in the United States since the COVID-19 pandemic as clues to focus on the crisis facing gig workers in the pandemic. He stated that compared to traditional employment, gig work had a high unemployment rate, unstable income, high social mobility, and difficulty in obtaining basic social insurance. Additionally, the legal rights and collective negotiation of gig workers also posed challenges for labor policy formulation. Therefore, gig work faced a serious crisis during the pandemic. He pointed out that the U.S. government had temporarily alleviated the low unemployment insurance coverage and low relief funds for gig workers by implementing temporary solutions such as providing pandemic unemployment assistance (PUA), pandemic emergency unemployment compensation (PEUC), and Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC). However, with the changing pandemic situation, the U.S. government terminated the pandemic unemployment assistance program in early September and did not include it in the national “Build Back Better Act”. He believed that since the traditional unemployment insurance system could not meet the needs of gig workers and the existing unemployment insurance was difficult to expand coverage, the government could provide partial support for gig workers from a cash and insurance perspective by issuing job search allowances, implementing basic income plans, and carrying out employment guarantee plans to address the crisis they face when unemployment insurance reform could not solve the problem for gig workers.

During the discussion session, Professor He Qin from the School of Labor Economics at the Capital University of Economics and Business made insightful comments and responses on the common employment risks faced by gig workers. He conducted a comparative analysis of the unemployment insurance and employment protection policies for gig workers in the United States and China during the COVID-19 pandemic. He also engaged in in-depth discussions with Dr. Ian Greer on various issues such as the number of relief fund applications and unemployed individuals in the U.S., the termination of short-term relief measures for gig workers, the establishment of long-term relief systems, and the implementation of a basic income plan in the U.S.

Ian Greer is currently the director of the Joint Laboratory of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University in the United States and a senior researcher. He has worked in the UK for nearly 10 years, serving as a senior researcher at Leeds University Business School and a professor specializing in employment relations comparison at the University of Greenwich, where he also served as the director of the Work and Employment Research Centre. He has been a visiting professor at universities in Aix-en-Provence, France; Cachan, France; Berlin, Germany; Jena, Germany; Cologne, Germany; Chemnitz, Germany; and Sydney, Australia. With over 20 published articles and more than 10 books, he has extensive experience in teaching, lecturing, and research.

(International Office of Cooperation and Exchange)