A new report by Co-operatives UK called “Not Alone:  Trade Union and Co-operative Solutions for Self-Employed Workers” offers a thoughtful, rigorous overview of this neglected sector of the economy.  Although it focuses on the UK, its findings easily apply internationally, particularly for co-operative and union-based solutions.

The author of the report, Pat Conaty, notes that “self-employment is at a record level” in the UK – some 15% of the workforce – and rising.  While some self-employed workers choose this status, a huge number are forced into through layoffs and job restructuring, with all the downward mobility and loss of security implied by them.

Few politicians or economists are honestly addressing the implications.  They assume that technological innovation will simply create a new wave of jobs to replace the ones being eliminated, same as it ever was.

The sad truth is that investors and companies benefit greatly from degrading full-time jobs into piecemeal, task-based projects tackled by a growing pool of precarious workers.  This situation is only going to become more desperate as artificial intelligence, automation, driverless vehicles and platform economics offshore and de-skill conventional jobs if they don’t permanently destroy them.

The “Not Alone” report does not tackle this larger mega-challenge, but it does fill an enormous void by addressing how the precariat might begin to fight back.  In many respects, the challenge is about basic survival for the Uber drivers and temp workers, agency staff and solo creatives, who are now forced to fend for themselves.  Conaty describes the basic problem:

The self-employed precariat do not enjoy employment rights and protections at work, or any of the implicit services associated with being an employee, such as payroll or workplace insurance – let alone pension or sick pay.  In addition, their potential income is indirectly eroded by other costs such as agency fees.  They face additional challenges related to being paid on time and the right to a contract.  To compound all of this, many self-employed are among the lowest paid workers in the UK.

Not only are many self-employed workers among the lowest paid, they often have careers based on “zero hours contracts” (no guaranteed work or income), part-time work and “portfolios” (multiple temporary or part-time jobs drawing on the same set of skills).  All of these developments may serve the interests of capital and companies, but do they really represent “progress” for most solo practitioners?

The report calls for the “cousins of the labor movement” – co-operatives, trade unions and mutual organizations – to come together, as they did in another era of history, to help form new institutions to help the precariat.

In the US, one such advocate for the self-employed is the Freelancers Union, which seeks to “connect freelancers to group-rate benefits, resources, community, and political action to improve their lives – and their bottom lines.”  The Freelancers Union is not a trade union or co-operative, but it does provide health, dental and other benefits to its 280,000 members.

In Belgium, a co-operative known as SMart provides invoicing and debt collection services for its 60,000 members who work in commercial art and design.  SMart functions as a kind of modern-day guild, helping members avoid the burden of setting up a company and providing small loans, training services, legal advice and shared workspaces.

General trade unions in the Netherlands and Spain represent self-employed workers and provide services.  In India, there is a Self-Employed Women’s Association that acts as a service co-operative for its 1.7 million members, providing “micro-insurance” and advocating for workers’ rights.

One of the more innovative mutual aid models is the “bread fund.”  It’s a new type of organization first developed in the Netherlands that provides sick pay to the self-employed.  Each bread fund has between 20 and 50 self-employed members who put aside money every month into their individual bread fund account. The money remains theirs, but is used to support them and other members if they become sick.  No bread fund may have more than 50 members. In the Netherlands, there are currently 170 bread funds in 88 towns and cities, with more than 7,000 participating members.

The report describes a large array of other self-help, co-operative solutions. They include mutual guarantee societies (co-operative societies of small businesses that guarantee each other’s loans), credit unions for the self-employed, and co-operative money and credit.

The report also discusses ways in which the government can help legally protect marginal survival activities – often known as the “informal economy” – and integrate them into the mainstream economy.  An entire section of the report deals with co-operatives in digital sectors, “social care” and the “solidarity economy.”

As far as general strategies for helping the self-employed, Conaty recommends four priority goals (my paraphrasing here):

1) Recognize this growing workforce by developing organizing strategies for them;

2) Focus on providing mutualized services to workers in creative industries, care services and the green economy;

3) Represent the interests of self-employed workers in national policymaking; and

4) Help develop regulatory solutions to enable collaboration among self-employed workers with respect to mutual guarantee societies and worker benefits.

There is much to digest in “Not Alone,” and many creative challenges to be met. This report illuminates this poorly understood landscape with insightful analyses, useful detail and lessons from the history of co-operatives and mutual aid.

Cross-posted from Bollier.org

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Self-employment has become the new yeast in the UK economy dough. 4.6 million today are self-employed (15% of the workforce) and since 2008 they have created two-thirds of new jobs. The record rise of self-employment is unprecedented. By 2018 it is expected that more people will be in self-employment than in public sector jobs.

While a proportion of the self-employed do well financially, they are today the exception. Indeed the stereotype of the self-employed as small businesses is less true than ever before. 83% of the UK self-employed work alone. Average earnings are far too low to employ anyone else. The median annual income of the self-employed plummeted from £15,000 in 2008 to £10,400 in 2013. Low pay however is only part of the picture. An absence of worker rights and support services aggravates hardship and makes matters worse.

Under European Union regulations temporary and agency staff are entitled as ‘workers’ to sickness and holiday pay. This is not the case for self-employed as the Not Alone report highlights. They also have to put in days of work unpaid for bidding, negotiating contracts, tax and national insurance administration, billing, accounts management and debt collection.

How can self-employed workers overcome lop-sided risks, over-bearing costs and additionally secure fair trade terms and conditions? To avoid ‘walking alone’, some freelancers are rediscovering solidarity, co-operation and the logic of mutual aid. Trade unions in the media sector in Germany, Scandinavia and the UK have been demonstrating ways to do this.

The Federation of Entertainment Unions (FEU) is the UK network of trade unions in media. Members include the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), BECTU, Equity and the Musicians Union; all have a high proportion of self-employed members. A common FEU strategy is to secure ‘worker status’ for their freelance members and then to negotiate worker rights.

Co-operatively owned employment agencies can provide the operational means to achieve this outcome and especially if backed by a trade union. For example, faced by rising agency fees, 50 music teachers in Swindon formed a co-op to market their services to schools, to assist with negotiations and to provide other collective services. The Musicians Union and Co-operatives UK  have jointly promoted this strategy and music supply teachers in many other regions have done the same. Likewise Actors Co-ops have steadily expanded to 30 in England and Wales. The co-ops work closely as a network with Equity, the actor’s union.

Co-operatives UK supported RICOL, a co-operative agency for interpreters and translators, that was set up in 2012 after the interpreting service for the law courts was contracted out to Capita who reduced the terms and conditions on offer.

Co-operative innovators in France and Belgium have developed integrated services for self-employed workers in relation to affordable workspace, back office services, debt collection, low-cost insurance and for securing sickness and benefit payments from the state. These Business and Employment Co-operatives (BECs) pioneers include the CAE network in France with 72 local co-operatives and Smart in Belgium – a co-operative with over 60,000 members.

In the USA, new Union Co-ops are emerging. Under a joint agreement, the US Steelworkers, the largest union in the USA, and the successful Mondragon Co-operatives from Spain are co-developing the model. Union Co-ops are being set up in a range of industries and cities from Pittsburg to Los Angeles. In Cincinnati, Ohio, there are seven Union Co-ops including a food hub, a railway manufacturer, a ‘green laundry’ and a jewellery manufacturer.

The Freelancers Union in the USA has developed as a mutual to provide insurance and other legal and advocacy services for more than 280,000 members. In the Netherlands and in Spain, general unions for the self-employed have emerged and developed since the 1990s.

To help secure rights for self-employed workers, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the ILO and the International Co-operative Alliance have developed an organisers’ handbook. Solidarity economy strategies are growing but are still fragmented. Bringing together best practice internationally could trigger a new game plan that might snowball by bringing together solidarity solutions. The trade union and co-operative movements need to unite to make this happen.

Photo by blakespot

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