Independent Workers and Industrial Relations in Europe: A Study on New Forms of Collective Representation

1. I-WIRE Independent Workers and Industrial Relations in Europe The social dialogue between traditional and innovative forms of collective representation Principal Investigator: Renata Semenza (University of Milan)

2. PROJECT PRESENTATION AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS

3. Relevance of the Study • Since the ’90 renewed attention to self-employment: • Transition to service economies • Disruptive power of digital capitalism • Increase of highly-skilled, flexible and hyper- specialized professionals • Spread of individual bargaining connected to the individualization of working conditions

4. Relevance of the Study Ambiguity of the process: opportunities and risks • More autonomy and self-determination • All risks of their activities on individual basis and growing instability of professional careers (Ranci 2012) Several critics have stressed the dominance of the market element over the social one /Streeck 2014, Scarpf 2010)

5. Relevance of the Study • The ambiguity is well represented by the new independent workers or “second generation self-employment” (Bologna 2007) high-skilled (such as interpreters, consultants, trainers, IT specialists, artists, translators, analysts, accountants etc..) • Who mainly belongs to non-regulated professions and works in the advanced service sectors

6. Relevance of the Study They constitutes an heterogeneous group of professionals, that includes: • Both intellectual and technical professions • Different working conditions and employment relations (depending on labour contracts) • High Income inequality and variability • Different skilled-based tasks

7. Relevance of the Study • Within the public opinion professional self-employed were associated with innovation, economic development and prosperity, as the upper middle-class and winners in the new-liberal era • An idealized picture of I-Pros describes them as high earners, high consumers, able to protect their incomes, including insurance and pension, professional upgrading and mobility

8. Relevance of the Study • Reinforced by the 2008 financial crisis, especially in Europe, specific difficulties affecting the middle-class (whose professional self-employed are an essential component) emerged: worse return of their qualification, talents/ human capital, and resources • The crisis stimulated the demandof knowledge workers for greater social and professional protections, for some forms of self-help, associationism and collective representation across Europe

9. Relevance of the Study • The proliferation of professional services showed: • A lack of benefits typically associated with traditional working sectors and occupations • Thus, the necessity for an adaptation of the social safety net

10. The I-WIRE project Twofold objective: • Pinpointing socio-economic needs/demands raised by the I-Pros in the European labour markets, associated with their legal status and working conditions • Analyzing the responses coming from Institutions and traditional and non-traditional collective representation (Unions, Quasi-Unions and LMIs) or community-based associations Comparative perspective: cross-country European analysis : Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom

11. The geography of I-WIRE partners in Europe

12. The I-WIRE project Multi-dimensional analysis across 3 levels: • macro-institutional (national regulatory frameworks) • meso-organisational (representative organizations, cases studies) • micro-individual (survey) Research outcomes: 9 national reports, 30 case studies of organizations, the international survey (about 1800 respondences)

14. Starting Definition adopted Independent Professional (I-Pros) 3 criteria: 1. self-employed without employees 2. engaged in economic activity which does not belong to the farming, craft or retail sectors 3. engaged in activities of an intellectual nature and/or which come under service sectors • NACE CATEGORIES: • Information and communication (NACE key J) • Financial and insuranceactivity (NACE key K) • Real estate activities (NACE key L) • Professional, scientific and technicalactivities (NACE key M) • Administrative and supportservices (NACE key N) • Education (NACE key P) • Human health and social work (NACE key Q) • Arts, entertainment and recreation (NACE key R) • Other service activities (NACE key S) Rapelli, S. (2012). European I-Pros: a study. Professional Contractors Group (PCG), UK Leighton, Mckeown (2015)

15. Quantitative trends: what the statistical data say • The first European study (Rapelli 2012) estimated the number of freelancers/ I-Professionals amounting to 8.570.000, with a rate of growth of 82% in 10 years, while the other categories of both self-employed and employees are stable or decreasing • In 2015: 8.945.000 I-Pros, concentrated mainly in: Italy, UK, Germany and France

16. Growth of I-Pros in Europe Rapelli, S. (2012). European I-Pros: a study. Professional Contractors Group (PCG), UK

17. The growing trend of the I-Pros in Europe is confirmed Source: our elaboration of Eurostat data

19. I-Pros in Europe: variations Source: our elaboration of Eurostat data

20. I-Prospercentage per country over the total in Europe Source: our elaboration of Eurostat data

21. What the statistical data say:a trend of growth Relevant growth of professional self-employed, involved in knowledge/skilled-based activities within service sectors Such growth highlighted that: • It is a structural trend • Only a small part is bogus self-employment (similar to employee, working for one main client), the majority are real self-employed, working for numerous clients • It represents an increasing occupational form, functional to the contemporary capitalistic model, which needs work flexibility, high skilled-based competences and multitasking (broad professions)

22. Institutional framework: three critical dimensions The Institutional framework from a comparative/cross-country analysis sheds light on 3 main recurrent emblematic dimensions of self-employment: • Institutional recognition of status between binary regulative approach (self-employment versus employees) and new hybrid ideal-types (semi-subordinated, economically dependent autonomous workers, bogus self-employment, salaried entrepreneurs) • Social protection (in comparison with employees) • Collective representation between traditional and non-traditional organizations and practices, in contexts of exacerbation of the labour market fragmentation (labour contracts, tasks, working time and places…)

23. Research questions • Given these three critical dimensions, is there a process of convergent responses among the European countries, or differentiation ? • Are there innovative regulation laws, policies and practices at country/regional level - able to respond to these institutional critical dimensions? • Is there room -within the changing institutional framework- for innovative strategies from the social partners?

24. Research questions 4. Are these new configurations of collective representation able to transform the traditional practices in employment relationships? How? Could we predict a new era of collective representation, and the rise of new durable solidarities?

25. THANK YOU

26. MAIN RESEARCH FINDINGS

27. Main Findings • High degree of fragmentation within self-employment, at 3 different levels: • MACRO: social protection systems, fiscal provisions, recognition of legal status • MESO: collective representation forms • MICRO: incomes (high for one part, but also very low for the majority), and work process in micro-tasks (multiple competences and jobs, broad professions)

28. Main Findings 2. The research confirms weak and limited social protection schemes (unemployment benefits, sickness, maternity leave, holidays, pension)for professional self-employed, compared to standard employees (permanent and full-time), and different kind of social protection regimes We highlight 3 topics: • the kind of protection (public vs private, voluntary vs compulsory) • The social regime they offers (inclusion – exclusion patterns) • The linkages with the general welfare system

29. Main Findings 3. Confirmation that there are specific and problematic working conditions of I-Pros: • e.g. fair compensation, minimum fees, times of payment, compressed work times, professional development and career upgrading (e.g. high costs during training and debts incurred for training) 4. Proliferation of new collective actors and new forms of organization (mainly bottom-up; self-organizations) of collective representation, and innovationwithin the traditionalcollectiveorganizations(unions, professionalassociations) creation of ad hoc structures

30. Type of membership • In Europe most of the investigated experiences organize professional self-employed transversallyacross different occupations, economic sectors and a wide range of activities and tasks, rather than to specific professions

31. Different dominant patterns • The provision of professional services specifically provided for self-employed members represents the main organizational strategy in several organizations • The lobbying model embodies a second widespread organizational strategy • Coalition-building finally represents a further organizational strategy adopted to give collective voice to these scattered segment of the labour market

32. For an effective collective representation of this labour market segment, what seems to be needed is a shared collective understanding of the phenomenon and of the relative challenges it raises • we can certainly observe a high degree of transnational emulation

33. POLICY IMPLICATIONS

34. POLICY IMPLICATIONS • Changes in the nature of workand its organization with the diffusion of new forms of employment relations and working conditions • Ask for a revision of the conceptual approach on employment relations and a rethinking of both the regulatory framework on employment relations, the welfare and social protection models

35. Socio-Political implications 1. Extension of social security towards less selective models (category by category) and more universal (Resolution of the European Parliament 2014: Social protections for all, including the autonomous workers); 2. Public policies to promote , incentive and support self-employment(active labour market policies…..); 3. New associative strategies (neo- mutualism?) (K.Polanyi → defensive wave: the society defends itself from the institutional inertia and market excesses?)

36. Recognition of Legal Status for free-lancers According to the recent literature and debate (Steward and Stanford, 2017) the following options are available for reforming the regulatory framework:

37. 3 options • to expand the existing protection rules to cover at least those contractors that can be considered as ‘dependent contractors’ • to define minimum rights for allworkers instead of creating a new categories of workers • regulation of the “employer” status especially when the employer is split between the intermediary and the end user. Online platforms do not consider themselves as traditional employers, but only as intermediaries between the users and the workers.

38. Rethinking social protection The welfare and social protection models need also to be revised in order to ensure a social safety net to all workers Different options are available: • a universal approach to social protection and social rights, whatever the employment status • social protection provisions based on individual private schemes • an intermediate model based on two pillars: a minimum public scheme + an integrative scheme

39. EU ROLE • To support these changes EU institutions could support a proactive labour regulation enhancing the quality and fairness of work across the whole spectrum of precarious, insecure work, as also recently affirmed by the European Parliament Report on European Social Rights (2017)

40. Further research. THE MISSING ACTORS: employers and employer’s organizations The research investigated the side of workers, it would be interesting to deep also: • how companies organize work, in particular platform capitalism and collaborative economies that "exclusively" use self-employed (and not employees) • the issues of the open bargaining, entrepreneur-platform mimetism / role of the algorithms

41. Convergence or differentiation? • For the three aspects investigated more similarities than differences emerge among countries • To common challenges the reactions (debate and regulative responses) are at different stages: • More advanced: high specificity (law ad hoc), extension of the protection → Italy and Spain • Less advanced: low specificity (neglected model), failure of the national regulation for the opposition of actors, both on the employer side as well as on the union side and market responses (self-regulation) → Belgium, France, Netherland

42. Convergence or differentiaqtion? • Intermediate positions: → Germany: legal status ad hoc but fragmented social protections on occupational basis → United Kingdom: public support and promotion of the autonomous work, simplified framework, agile regulation but without specific extensions of the social security → Sweden: protections as universal rights in the labour market

43. What factors explain the clusters? • Legal-institutional framework (legalism/ coperativism versus market) • Incidence of autonomous work and of I-Pros • Sectoral composition and labour market (more tertiarization and less regulated labour markets are more pushed towards market defences) • Degree of institutional radicalisation of trade unions

44. RESULT: the strength of representation • Representation as original value, with transformative power, which does not create a new layer in the existing reality (as a reform) but it creates a new one • We can expect representation to have repercussions and effects on the other two aspects: legal status and social protections • Innovative forms of representation as a driver towards the renewal/transformation of the traditional forms and functional to a network of support (services, incentives…)