In Search of Lost Solidarities

Today, at OuiShare Fest 2016, we talked about “lost solidarities” with Saru Jayaraman, co-founder of ROC United, an organization that is reinventing activism for non-unionized workers (it has organized restaurant workers to win workplace justice campaigns), Matthieu Leventis, who cofounded Mangrove to promote new ways of working, and Fabrice Epelboin ,who cofounded Yogosha, a “Bug Bounty Platform”. The panel was moderated by Diana Filippova.

Because Switch Collective aims to empower people to redesign their work lives in a context of ever-increasing change, we think a lot about all issues related to the future of work. And the subject of “lost solidarities” in high on our list!

Work is changing increasingly fast

Salaried work is still the norm: the ratio ‘salaried workers / all workers’ is still over 90%! But it has peaked and is now clearly on the decrease. Many more workers will be independent workers in the coming years. In France, our long-term contract is increasingly challenged: it’s no longer the norm, as 9 out of 10 new jobs are now short-term contracts. Wage-earners will be used to switching from one employer to the next more often.

Already nearly 60 million workers in the USA work as independent workers. France is catching up, both because more workers choose autonomy over 9-to-5 jobs and because there aren’t that many attractive job offers. There are 600+ new independent workers every day in France.

Hybrid forms of work are becoming ever more common. To make ends meet, many workers combine several activities. They have a salaried job and some gig or company on the side. A large number of freelancers are in fact also salaried workers. Many more workers will become slashers to find more meaning in their work lives or just to complement meagre revenues.

But our institutional solidarities are not evolving fast enough

Our social protection institutions have not evolved to accommodate these new categories of workers.

In fact, because of an increasingly large ‘unconventional’ workforce, the traditional model of social protections is under threat even for traditional workers! Our French ‘Sécurité Sociale’ is in dire straits with ever shrinking revenues: on the one hand, on-demand workers (Uber and the like) aren’t asked to make similar social security contributions; on the other hand, uncreative public policies have continuously cut employers’ contributions, leaving the bulk of the contributions to be made by ever poorer workers. All of this is nothing but a recipe for total disaster.

We need to imagine the social protections of tomorrow

The discussion is not just about overhauling the coverage of traditional risks. It is about acknowledging the fact that there are new risks in an era when everybody needs and wants to switch.

Housing is now our number one ‘risk’. Rent guarantees and access to loans are de facto inaccessible to today’s independent workers, unless they have material assets. Today banks will not lend money to unconventional workers, however rich they actually are. Landlords will not rent their property to people with irregular revenues.

We should create institutions that tackle precisely that risk. A new social security branch in France could cover the issue of housing guarantees. But in all likelihood private companies will cover the risk in the meantime, as can be seen in the value proposal of a French startup called Wemind.

Health / parental leaves / disability etc. are the common risks covered by our traditional institutions. Freelance workers are not well covered for these risks, unless they choose to pay extra for a special private insurance package—which few of them choose to do, as they are often younger and unaware of the need to be covered. Insurance companies and startups see a big new market opening up and are increasingly targeting this category of workers. However, a completely private insurance system is incompatible with the solidarity provided by a universal public system. In a private system, each ‘customer’ wants to pay to cover their own risks, not those of others.

Mandatory coverage within our ‘Sécurité Sociale’ would be a big leap forward for freelance workers. A continuous personal social security account not related to the employment status could be a way to include these workers. The French have debated the idea of a ‘Compte Personnel d’Activité’, which goes in that direction but is still largely an empty shell.

Training is not really the ‘risk’ that it used to be. As many training programs are easily available, it has become a commodity. However these programs and the skills thus acquired aren’t acknowledged by employers and institutions. Workers will increasingly be active in crafting their own work lives and learning the new skills they need to move forward. The question is less ‘What can you do?’ than ‘What led you here?’ and ‘How much can you learn?’. We’ll need to find a way to have those self-acquired skills ‘validated’.

As not every worker will remain a freelancer all their life, they will have to be “employable” if they want to switch back to salaried work. We need to teach traditional corporations and the government to recruit people differently and measure skills and potential based on market-based signal as well as traditional degrees and experience. That implies a profound cultural switch for French employers who tend to put workers in set boxes.

Finally, unemployment insurance should be designed to empower workers to switch. Today French workers can receive unemployment benefits only if they are laid off or if they (painfully) manage to negotiate a mutual separation agreement with their employers. So effectively they are at the mercy of their employers and rarely free to leave. It’s a bit of a paradox that we think of short-term contracts as a negative evolution, because it is said to lead to a more precarious life, and view stable long-term contracts as the most desirable status. Increasingly long-term contracts can also be seen as a trap for workers who are not free to pursue other goals. It’s like trading employability for security!

Individuals could be granted some sort of permanent drawing rights for income that doesn’t depend on their status and what they do. It could be modelled after the institutions that France created for its artists (the ‘régime des intermittents’). Gig workers will need revenues in-between gigs and/or during periods of breaks in order to prepare for their next professional move.

Conclusion

Although they should cover the risks for new categories of workers, our traditional institutions remain stuck in the past. Increasingly startups — networks and platforms — are doing what public institutions are not. But because of the free-market opt-out option, not everyone is covered. Insurance companies have to deal with the issue of adverse selection, the tendency of those in dangerous jobs or high risk lifestyles to get insurance while people who face less risk, typically young people when it comes to health risks, tend to remain uninsured.

Basic universal income is an interesting discussion to have, but it doesn’t solve the problem of highly critical risks like housing and health. Depending on where you live, they are more or less affordable. Access to housing and health is critical to workers. You can’t have a job if you can’t live within a reasonable distance of your work place, or if you’re unhealthy. These are the most pressing issues that need to be tackled. So basic income isn’t enough really.

If we want our solidarities to survive in the 21st century, we ought to find a way to raise more awareness and lobby our governments to create public social protection systems that take all workers into account. The kind of activism conducted by the American Freelancers’ Union over the past two decades in the US can be a source of inspiration.

Switchers, slashers, freelancers, entrepreneurs and other ‘unconventional’ workers deserve no less!