A Tao's work photo before his death
Nearly a month ago, on September 23, Ah Tao (pseudonym), who worked as a warehouse manager at a Dingdong grocery store, was found dead in his rented room.
Before his death, Ah Tao worked at a Dingdong grocery store in Changxindian Town, Fengtai, Beijing. On the evening of September 19, Ah Tao asked the store manager for leave due to physical discomfort, and in the following days, his family and colleagues were unable to contact him again until his body was found in the rental house on the 23rd. A few days before his death, Ah Tao worked a 12-hour night shift.
The autopsy results showed that Ah Tao died suddenly, and the specific cause of death was unknown because no autopsy was performed.
A Tao's family said that after A Tao's death, Dingdong did not take the initiative to solve the problem, but said that he was an employee of a third-party platform. On October 11, the contact person of the third-party platform company told the family that Ah Tao had no direct relationship with Dingdong Grocery Shopping, and that they were in a labor cooperative relationship, and that his death did not apply to work-related injuries, and it could not be proved that there was a direct connection with the company. However, tens of thousands of yuan can be compensated for humanitarian reasons, and the specific amount can be negotiated.
On the 12th, the relevant person in charge of Dingdong Grocery told the Red Star News reporter that the company has set up a special team to actively promote communication and care with family members and aftermath work together with the tripartite company to which the employees belong.
The 42-year-old warehouse manager died in the rental house
The police determined that it was a sudden death
On September 23, in an urban village in Wangzuo Township, Fengtai, Beijing, Mr. Sun made more than a dozen phone calls to his brother-in-law, A Tao, and his colleagues, but no one answered. He then received a call from a stranger who told him a location to come over. After the meeting, he was taken to a rental house, where Mr. Sun saw that the police were also there, and the police told him that Ah Tao was "gone."
Mr. Sun said that Ah Tao's mother had told him that she had been unable to contact her son for many days and asked him to help him find him. Mr. Sun asked a number of colleagues who were shopping for food in Dingdong to know his specific address, and knew that Tao had not gone to work for many days, so he came to the urban village where he lived to look for it, but he did not expect that the people were gone.
Mr. Sun informed the other family members and went with him to the police station for investigation. After an investigation and an autopsy, the police determined that the 42-year-old Ah Tao died suddenly and was not a criminal case.
The conclusion of the death investigation issued by the Fengtai police
The stranger who contacted Mr. Sun on September 23 was surnamed Wang, who was the manager of a Dingdong grocery store and later left. He happened to be near Ah Tao's rented residence that day.
Mr. Wang recalled that at around 10 a.m. that day, he received a call from Hu, Tao's regional director, saying that he had not been able to contact Tao for three days and asked him to look for someone in the rental house.
After communicating with the landlady and the old lady, the two went upstairs together to find Tao's room. "The door was unlocked, it just opened. I saw people on the ground, face down, a puddle of black blood on the ground, and a foul smell in the room. Mr. Wang said that he did not enter the room when he saw the scene, closed the door and told the landlord that "there is no one." The two each called the police.
Mr. Wang also informed Hu of the situation, and Hu said that the company would send someone to deal with it. In the chat records between Mr. Wang and Mr. Hu provided by Tao's family, Mr. Hu told Mr. Wang that "the supplier's people are already on the way to the past." In the chat log, Hu also reminded Mr. Wang not to say anything about Dingdong grocery shopping.
Ah Tao's family later learned that the supplier in Hu's mouth was a third-party company signed by Ah Tao. Ah Tao, like many Dingdong grocery store employees, did not sign a labor contract with Dingdong grocery shopping, but signed a third-party company.
The store manager where Tao worked before also told reporters that they all signed agreements with third parties, and the working hours in the store were generally 12 hours.
On October 11, the Red Star News reporter came to the house that A Tao rented before his death, which is located in the urban village of Wangzuo Town, Fengtai District. In Ah Tao's rental house, the reporter met the landlord.
The room that Tao rented before his death has now been cleaned
The landlord still has palpitations when he remembers the scene at that time. According to his recollection, Ah Tao rented a house for more than two months, during which they only met twice; Tao is very polite, doesn't drink, and is also very frugal.
"He usually doesn't come back from work until 11 p.m. and he doesn't see him until now. The child is weak to speak, and I joke that he is not as good as me, so he sighs and says that he is tired. The landlord recalled the conversation with Tao before.
He worked many days and nights before his death
When taking leave, he said that "the eye is bloodshot, and the right eye cannot see"
According to the information provided by the family, Ah Tao is 42 years old this year, previously did business in Shanxi, and began to come to Beijing Dingdong to buy groceries in 2022.
According to the family, starting in July this year, Ah Tao was transferred from the manager of a store in Xisanqi to a store in Yungang, Fengtai as a warehouse manager, during which he took several leave of absence because his mother was sick and hospitalized, and in September he was transferred to the store of Changxin Store in Fengtai until his death. Due to his busy work, he has been renting a house near the store, rarely returning to his home in Shijingshan, and his family contacts him through WeChat and telephone.
Mr. Sun said that what the family wanted to know most was what Ah Tao experienced before his death, which would cause sudden death. However, Dingdong did not cooperate with the provision of monitoring and punch-in records, and they could only use Ah Tao's mobile phone and find out from his colleagues to restore the status at that time.
In the WeChat chat record of A Tao's mobile phone, the reporter saw the communication record between him and the manager of the Changxin store. Ah Tao said on September 17 that he asked the store manager for leave because he couldn't see clearly, but was responded by the store manager with reasons such as "you can rest early if you are not feeling well"; The next day, when the store manager asked him to come back to work for another day, Ah Tao replied, "My eyes are full of blood, and I can't see in my right eye", and said, "Send me a voice, I can't see what you wrote"; On the evening of the 19th, Ah Tao had a 45-second call with the store manager, and there was no contact after that.
A Tao's chat record of asking the store manager for leave
Mr. Sun said that Ah Tao had high blood pressure and diabetes, and he suspected that there might have been signs of a stroke at that time, which caused his eyes to be congested and unable to see.
On October 11, at the Dingdong Changxin store, the reporter met a colleague who was on the night shift with A Tao. The colleague said that when Ah Tao came to work on September 17, he took medicine and didn't let him do much work. After unloading the goods, he went to do his own thing, did not pay attention to Ah Tao's situation, and did not see Ah Tao again after getting off work the next morning. Ah Tao has not been in the store for a long time, and he can see that his health is not very good, but there are no obvious health problems.
A recording of the communication between the store manager Tian and Ah Tao's family shows that the store manager Tian said that Ah Tao went to the evening shift on September 17 and left work the next morning. On September 18, Ah Tao asked for leave to rest, and on the evening of September 19, he had one last conversation with Ah Tao, asking about his physical condition and agreeing to take leave. Later, on September 20 and 21, he contacted Tao but did not receive a reply. Store Manager Tian mentioned in the recording that Ah Tao had previously said that he would not contact him during the break, and he didn't care too much about not being able to contact him for two days, but he didn't expect to hear the bad news on September 23.
In this recording, Store Manager Tian also mentioned that Ah Tao came to this store on September 1 and worked for more than ten days, with two or three days off in between; Previously, it had been the day shift, and the Mid-Autumn Festival (September 17) was changed to a night shift; Each shift is 12 hours a day, and the night shift is from 10 p.m. to 10 a.m.
Watermark camera photos show that at 2 a.m. on September 13, Ah Tao was working in the aquatic area
Sign a flexible employment agreement with a third-party company before your death
The company said it was willing to give tens of thousands of yuan in humanitarian compensation
According to a work agreement with Tao, Tao signed a "freelancer service agreement" with a company called Hangzhou Yunqiandou Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as Yunqiandou). The agreement stipulates that Party A (Yunqiandou) and the platform company will pay Party B the service fee according to the service standards and charging standards of the project service personnel confirmed by the cooperative company. Amounts may fluctuate. The agreement also mentions that since the two parties do not constitute any labor/labor contract relationship or other similar labor law relationship, the company has no legal obligation to pay social insurance and purchase any insurance for Party B, nor does it assume any social security benefits for Party B.
Mr. Sun said that after the incident, the third-party company had a contact person to communicate with them. At the end of September, the family found the Dingdong grocery office area, and after the two sides had an argument and called the police, they negotiated with Dingdong and the third-party company under the leadership of the police.
According to the recording of the on-site negotiation between the parties on September 30 provided by Ah Tao's family, the family proposed to keep the punch-in records and surveillance video, and compensate according to the standard of work-related death. The third-party company said that if the work-related injury is determined, it will pay according to the standard; In the case of personal negligence, humanitarian compensation will also be made, but the amount will not be very high. An employee of Dingdong said that its attitude is consistent with that of a third-party company, and that all webmasters and management are also managed by a third party in terms of employment relations.
On October 11, Yun Qiandou's contact person told Mr. Sun that Dingdong and the insurance company had read the autopsy report and the police conclusion, and believed that the matter had little to do with the company. Yun Qiandou is willing to provide humanitarian care to the family, the amount is tens of thousands of yuan, if the family accepts this form, the specific number can be negotiated, try to fight for as much as possible.
On October 13, the Red Star News reporter called the third-party company contact, and the other party said that how to reply needs to be reported, so that he can contact him tomorrow.
Dingdong said that a special team had been set up
We work with third-party companies to promote care and aftercare
Tao's father, 66, works as a cleaner in an office building in Beijing, and is also responsible for transporting Tao's two children to and from school and cooking for them. The old man told reporters that he could not accept the results of this treatment at all. "I can't understand why my son works for them and is not counted as their employee."
On October 13, Dingdong Grocery responded to Red Star News, saying: "The company intervened as soon as it learned of the incident. We are deeply saddened and regretted that the warehouse keeper, who was engaged in warehouse management at the work site, contacted the webmaster online on September 18 and 19 to ask for leave, and was later found dead at his residence on September 23. At present, the company has also set up a special team to actively promote communication and care with family members and aftermath work together with the tripartite company to which the employee belongs. ”
A relevant person in charge of handling the matter said that at present, the family is asking for 4 million yuan in compensation, but the two parties have failed to reach an agreement on the amount of compensation. Regarding this statement, Mr. Sun said that the "compensation claim of 4 million yuan" is an angry remark made by the other party in the communication, and their demand is to compensate according to the standard of work-related death, and the specific amount can be negotiated between the two parties. When the third party communicated, they said that they could only provide tens of thousands of yuan in compensation, which they could not accept.
Yao Junchang, a senior partner of Beijing Weiheng Law Firm and director of the Weiheng Labor Law Professional Committee, believes that this kind of flexible employment method is currently very common in related industries, and from past dispute cases, some workers will be found to have a de facto labor relationship with the company, and some workers will lose the lawsuit. From the analysis of the circumstances of this case, it is difficult to determine the work-related injury because the time of death cannot be determined, and the place of death is a rental house. If the legal process is to be pursued, the family can sue for personal injury or tort.
Fu Jian, director of Henan Zejin Law Firm, believes that judging from the service agreement signed between the employee and the third-party company, this agreement is essentially an employment contract agreement, which conforms to the characteristics of the labor law, and the two parties have actually established a labor contract relationship. However, there are certain difficulties in determining whether the labor relationship between the worker and Dingdong Grocery can be determined.
Red Star News reporters Fu Yao and Liu Yaya report from Beijing
Editor: Guo Yu, Editor-in-charge: Li Binbin
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