On placing a commitment to the self-employed and freelance workers at the heart of his election pledges Ed Miliband said that the self-employed are often the ‘most entrepreneurial, go-getting people in Britain’. He backed this up by making a conference pledge to provide ‘equal rights’ to the self-employed. He noted, ‘two out of three don’t have a pension, one in five cannot get a mortgage. They do not want special treatment. They just want a fair shot’.
All of this is important ground as the beating heart of Labour is not just in the classroom and the hospital but needs to also be in the toolbox of the tradesman, the keyboard of the freelance office worker and the pen of graphic designer and throughout the ranks of those working self-employed. For too long policies from all parties have focused on those forced into self-employment and are being exploited by the system or those who are masquerading as self-employed to exploit the system. In the middle of these two extremes there is a legitimate workforce which is being called the forgotten middle.
Our recent Labour Finance and Industry Group report entitled The Freelancing Agenda focuses on this workforce. The report discusses the growth in the number of freelancers in our economy and the fact that it is set to outstrip the number of those working in the public sector by 2016. When we wrote the report we concluded that freelancers do want rights: they want rights at work, not necessarily employment rights. The right to a contract, the right to a pension, the right to be paid and paid on time, the right to access similar benefits as their employed counterparts such as paternity and maternity pay, the right to fair treatment by the welfare system. They want the right to be able to compete and win government procurement contracts for services. Now the accountants in the room will be demurring that they can get some benefits already, that they have some latent rights on maternity and paternity and the right to charge late internet on late payments. This is true but this utopian view of the world is very different on the ground for the ‘precariat’ and other self-employed workers who are freelancing.
My co-author, Andrew Burke from Cranfield University, notes that many of the self-employed are not businesses in the traditional sense. They sell their skills and services in sequence to different clients, they may not be entrepreneurs in the traditional sense that they do not seek to grow and employ people, but Burke notes that they are legitimate economic agents in the economy and their contribution needs to be recognised. It is because it is this flexible workforce that enables other firms to grow and develop; not through the provision of cheap wages, but through the provision of skills and expertise.
The role for a future Labour government must be to firstly recognise, then nurture and protect this growing army of freelance and self-employed workers. But it is not a one-size-fits-all approach. The concerns of the blue-collar construction industry differ from those white-collar IT workers and may differ again from those in the creative industries. But they all need addressing. Issues around forced self-employment need to be resolved as do those of tax avoidance so that the genuine self employed can be focused on. In my opinion Labour would do well to revisit the Section 44 rules around agency workers that pushes unscrupulous firms use to push people into umbrella companies, while remembering that umbrella firms do have a legitimate role to play.
There is plenty of good research on freelancing; there is a growing movement too – Joe Dullroy and the European Freelancers’ Movement recently submitted a manifesto to the European parliament. Their key demands? ‘Recognise freelancers! Give us access! Count us! Give us a voice! Treat us fairly!’
Our LFIG report recognises this it cannot be fixed by a few policy changes – freelancing needs its own policy agenda. That is why we have developed the freelancing charter. Its goals are simple: to provide a platform for developing future policy – to give them ‘a fair shot’. It proposes the creation of a minister across departments who should have responsibility for the freelancing and self-employed agenda. Something that the Tories have picked up on last week with the appointment of a self-employed tsar. It also proposes the creation of a new optional Freelancing Limited Company as a vehicle to help freelancers trade.
The aim must be to give some modern rights to the self-employed, to empower them as recognised and true economic agents. It is not just rights at work but the right to be recognised as a business by tax authorities and their clients. The will to solve this problem I believe is there, the challenge is for freelancers, their groups and network to build it themselves.
Ed Miliband said Labour should be ‘using our historic values to fight for those at the frontline of the modern workforce. I’m talking about a group of people that we in the Labour party haven’t talked about that much and we need to talk about them a lot more. The growing army of our self-employed’. I agree.
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Philip Ross is a member of the Labour Finance and Industry Group and a co-author on their recent report The Freelancing Agenda. To be involved in future discussion please contact [email protected]
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