China has issued a draft of its first formal regulation to extend labour-law protections to the country’s rapidly growing ranks of gig and platform workers, a key segment of an expanding flexible workforce amid a tough job market.

Platform workers including ride hailing drivers and those engaged in food deliveries – a group totalling 84 million who often face irregular pay and intense workloads – will be entitled to basic labour protections covering pay, rest periods, workplace safety and more, according to the draft published on Thursday for public comment.

However, it only sets minimum standards for working conditions, falling far short of the protections currently afforded to workers in formal employment, according to the document from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.

“[The] government has finally taken action on the long overdue occupational security issues of workers who have not established clear labour relationships,” said He Wenjiong, a professor at Zhejiang University who specialises in social security.

The move comes as a rising number of Chinese turn to flexible work amid decreasing formal job openings amid an economic slowdown, raising concerns among the top leadership and members of the public over their rights, he added.

The nation’s ninth national survey of the workforce in 2023 showed that China had about 402 million workers, with roughly a fifth, or 84 million, in “new forms of employment”, meaning they earned a living by providing labour through internet platforms under platform rules and instructions.

The number is part of a broader flexible workforce that was estimated to total more than 200 million as of last year, according to a report co-issued by hiring agency zhaopin.com and Jinan University in February.

“The new regulation cannot address all the issues, but it at least establishes some important principles and puts in place several basic safeguards – for example, ensuring that wages will no longer be delayed, and protecting workers against occupational injury,” He said.

The draft requires that payment cycles not exceed one month and that work done on holidays be paid at a higher rate, but it does not specify by how much.

It also demands that platform companies join the government’s occupational injury protection scheme for workers, but the companies are not mandated to provide social insurance such as pensions and medical coverage.

On the right to rest, the regulation calls for “reasonably determining” maximum daily and weekly working hours and making them public.

Shen Qilan, who takes orders from a domestic-service platform to provide cleaning and cooking services for households in Shanghai, said she currently had none of the proposed protections.

“Even during this summer’s typhoon weather, when a customer placed an order, I had to go – otherwise the platform would reduce the number of future orders assigned to me,” she said.

“If it’s something extremely important, like getting married or a spouse’s death, you can request not to take orders, but only for two or three days at most,” she said.

In March, the human resources ministry said at a press conference that 17 provinces across China had run pilot programmes for occupational injury protection for gig workers, with more than 25 million people enrolled.