[ed. Co-ops will be an increasing trend in this era of diminished expectations and economic uncertainty; all kinds of co-ops: financial, health, assisted living, food, etc. There is strength (and protection) in numbers.]Big institutions are often slow to awaken to major social transformations. Microsoft was famously late to grasp the importance of the Internet. American auto manufacturers were slow to identify the demand for fuel-efficient cars. And today, the United States government is making a similar mistake: it still doesn’t seem to recognize that Americans no longer work the way they used to.
Today, some 42 million people — about a third of the United States work force — do not have jobs in the traditional sense. They fall into a catchall category the government calls “contingent” workers. These people — independent contractors, freelancers, temp workers, part-timers, people between jobs — typically work on a project-to-project basis for a variety of clients, and most are outcasts from the traditional system of benefits that provide economic security to Americans. Even as the economy has changed, employment benefits are still based on an outdated industrial-era model in which workers are expected to stay with a single company for years, if not their whole careers.
For most of the 20th century, it was efficient to link benefits to jobs this way. But today, more and more work falls outside the one-to-one, employee-to-employer relationship. Work is decentralized, workers are mobile, and working arrangements are fluid. However, the risks of life haven’t gone away: people still need protections. They just need a different system to distribute them. They need benefits that they can carry around, like their laptops. As things stand, millions of independent workers go without health and unemployment insurance, protection against discrimination and unpaid wages, and pension plans. It makes no sense.
One of the social innovators to recognize this problem early and act on it was Sara Horowitz, the founder of the Freelancers Union, which has more than 165,000 members across all 50 states. At Fixes, we highlight practical applications of ideas that have the potential to achieve widespread impact. That means looking at how ideas take root in institutions that become part of the fabric of society.
In the early 20th century, a landscape of new institutions — including the early labor unions and hundreds of civil society organizations like Rotary International, the Boy and Girl Scouts, and the N.A.A.C.P. — reshaped the American landscape. Today, the Freelancers Union offers a glimpse of the kind of social enterprise — mission-driven and pragmatic, market-savvy and cooperative — that is likely to proliferate in the coming years to meet the needs of a fast-changing work force and society.
by David Bornstein, NY Times | Read more:
Photo: Carolyn Silveira
