The Rights of the Self-Employed: A Principle Challenge for the Trade Union Movement
The following article is an excerpt from our latest printed Ecosprinter titled Reclaim Your Rights! – The Social Issue. We decided to bring you the articles from this edition in a digital form as well.
by Dr. Sam Murray
We as Greens strive for wide-ranging legislative social and welfare packages to ensure that climate justice and social justice sit side by side. To achieve this, we, as Greens must work with trade unions to ensure that the just transition is truly fair on all levels of society and to remove any notion that tackling climate change is a middle-class political past time – it is not, it is a harrowing reality. This collaboration is vital, and with the failure of social democratic parties, the Greens must be-come the natural allies for trade unions.
As the world of work changes, the tradeunions still have a shift tomake, particularly on under-standingthe challenges of self-employment. The tradeunion movement has been focused on the publicsector, leaving any notion of freelance workor self-employment to the fringes contained asissues within small unions.
As a member of the Musicians’ Union in theUK I see this a lot interactingwith the Trade Union Congress,who have to be constantly reminded thatthey do have self-employed members for whomlegislation acts differently, and who are morevulnerable than regular employees and who areleft without the protections that larger union membershave. It is often forgotten that self-employed workers don’t have unionrepresentatives to protectthem, don’t have the same basic working rights, and when they areexploited, they have limitedresources for support. Trade unions like theMusicians’ Union have become vital in providing the most basic ofsupport and protection thatmany employed workers never have to worry about.Self-employed workers have been left be-hindwhen it comes to workers’ rights– it is this frontierthat must be tackled if social rights are to betruly universal.
Only now Trade Unions are waking up to theconcept of the gig economy, the mass exploitation of self-employed workers using loopholes andgaps in workers legislation toturbo boost capitalism. We areseeing companies like Uber, Deliveroo and parceldelivery companies come under the spot-lightas they carry out bogus self-employment practicesto ensure workers can be exploited for minimalpay giving these companies excessive profit.
What many larger trade unions forget isthat workers like musicians andother creatives have been through such practices for years – it is even called the ‘gig economy’because of the way musicians are treatedon gigs. Young musicians in particular are facing constant exploitation:being told to play gigs for free for exposure, be-cause their profession is really a hobby,being offered one drink as payment, despite having spent hours rehearsing, and then taking greateffort to move equipment to agig. This exploitation needs tostop.
Self-employed workers are denied a vast amount of fundamental worker protections and rights that employed staff have. In many countries across the EU many self-employed parents cannot access shared parental leave or maternity pay, with some countries only offering maternity pay to self-employed mothers enforcing a sexist trope that only women should care for babies. This ignores the role of fathers and non-binary parents, and it often remains vague surrounding the access for same-sex couples. There is also limited regulations on sick pay, meaning that when a self-employed worker is ill there is no safety net below them and they will lose a day’s pay, which then often means a scramble for work to make it up. Self-employed workers, whilst often deter-mining their own hours and often put under unrealistic pressure from clients, who expect fast turnarounds, are expected to work for long hours beyond average expectations compared to an employed full-time worker.
The Green movement must offer solutions for self-employed workers, including adequate social rights and protections for them. We have already led the way in calling for a basic safety net of Universal Basic Income, which would vastly improve conditions for self-employed workers, and offer basic protections and financial security – but more is to be done. Working with the trade union movement we must devise and propose a welfare reform package of maternity rights, protection from exploitation and mental health support. For a Green society to be truly just, we must protect the future of self-employed work.
Sam is a former co-chair of the Young Greens of England and Wales and former FYEG EC Member. He correctly sits on the UK Trade Union Congress Young Workers Forum representing the Musicians Union.