SMart BE

= "organisation that offers realistic answers and administrative, legal, fiscal and financial advice as well as training and tools to simplify and legalise professional activities in the creative industry".

URL: http://smartbe.be/

Description

1.

"SMart is a non-profit organisation created in Belgium in 1998. They aim to simplify and support the professional paths of creative and cultural workers. Their principal goal is to help the self-employed develop their own activity through a secure system. They offer multiple services such as information, trainings, legal advice, van rentals, subsidies, a social professional network, etc."

2. Michel Bauwens

SMart belongs to the legal category of Business and Employment Cooperatives, also called "labour mutuals". Freelancers pay a percentage of their income (2%) into a mutual guarantee fund, that allows the mutual to pay invoices within a week, after which it then carries out the payment procedures with the clients for a standard 'factoring' fee. This more regular income then allows freelancers to pay themselves their own salary, and after reaching tresholds, to become a official employee of the organization, while retaining their full autonomy. This allows a non-subordinate form of labor, but also allows freelancers to get the benefits that go with the status of being employed. SMart's leadership also promotes a cooperative and mutualist values agenda. In 2016, they moved to the legal status of a European Cooperative, which started operating in ten EU countries, and they were likely to reach 100,000 members by the end of 2016.

Discussion

At the P2P Foundation we consider labour mutuals of the type of SMart to be a crucial bridge between the precarious statutes of independent workers and the protections of the social state available for the 'salariat', i.e the waged workers.