Self-employed workers: industrial relations and working conditions
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Introduction
Self-employment includes a diverse variety of workers. Own-account workers are common in traditional sectors of the economy, such as agriculture, forestry and fishing, retail trade, crafts, and in the liberal or free professions. They are also present to a large extent in building and construction and often in transport, particularly in road haulage. Freelance work is an established feature of the media sector, especially among journalists and photographers. However, in recent decades, following a number of technological innovations made possible by the extensive adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT) throughout the industry, self-employed workers have also emerged in many other occupations, such as graphic design, music composition and information technology (IT) specialist, particularly in web-based environments. Actors, musicians and performers in the entertainment industry represent other groups of workers who are often self-employed. Widespread restructuring and reorganisation and the impact of ICT have sometimes enabled much leaner organisational designs with a significant recourse to subcontracting, including to micro-enterprises and self-employed workers.
In this framework, forms of employment have recently emerged that do not entirely correspond to traditional self-employment or to proper dependent employment, which have been sometimes labelled as ‘economically dependent work’ – see the EIRO comparative study ‘Economically dependent workers’, employment law and industrial relations. These forms of employment, as well as the changes in the domain of dependent employment, with both the rise and diffusion of ‘atypical’ employment contracts and the seemingly increasing importance of skills and autonomy in organisational settings, have triggered a very broad debate on the possible ongoing structural changes in the domain of work. They have also fuelled the debate on the implications of such transformations on the regulation of labour, including both legislation and collective representation and bargaining.
Reflections on these developments are quite varied and involve the assessment of the changes underway, their relevance and their consequences. Positions range from the identification of changes that point to completely new patterns of employment regulation (as in ‘the end of labour law’ perspective) to the assertion that no relevant transformations are taking place and that existing situations are reproduced, perhaps in slightly different ways.
This comparative study intends to contribute to this debate by analysing the specific employment and working conditions of self-employed workers. Whenever possible, the analysis focuses in particular on own-account workers without employees. It also analyses new forms of employment that seemingly combine the demand of collective representation and protections with regard to employers or customers – which traditionally pertain almost exclusively to employees – with some of the disadvantages of employment and working conditions typically associated with self-employed workers. Such disadvantages include low and uncertain income flows, longer working hours as a form of self-exploitation, less strict health and safety regulation – with the associated higher risks – and lower pension protections. The choice of a joint comparative analytical report by the European Industrial Relations Observatory (EIRO) and the European Working Conditions Observatory (EWCO) has been considered particularly apt, as it will enable the analysis to cover, simultaneously and in an integrated manner, both collective representation issues and employment and working conditions aspects.
In particular, this report aims to present information on:
- recent trends in self-employment;
- the institutional framework applying to self-employment;
- collective representation of self-employment;
- employment and working conditions of self-employed workers.
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