Freelancers Union
= Freelancers Union is a non-profit organization in the United States that represents the needs and concerns of the independent workforce through advocacy, information, and service. [1]
URL = http://www.freelancersunion.org/
Description
1. By Anya Kamenetz:
"For the past year I have been working with an organization that points the way toward a new future of mutual benefit. Sara Horowitz was raised in the traditional left – her grandfather was vice president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union, and she and her father were both labor lawyers. But she grew impatient with the old categories and old ways of thinking. In 1995 she founded Working Today, now known as the Freelancers Union. She won a 1999 MacArthur Genius Grant for her work with the organization, which was conceived as the first step toward a "New New Deal," or new social safety net, that fits the way Americans live and work today. They currently have 52,000 members and provide health care at group rates to 17,000 freelancers in New York City. Freelancers Union members are also eligible for life, dental, and disability insurance, discounts, and connect online to exchange referrals, tricks of the trade and job opportunities. They are beginning to have meet-ups nationwide to encourage political participation and the all-important value of fellowship. Currently the Freelancers Union is expanding health insurance to members in 30 states. Plans for providing more benefits like unemployment and retirement are underway." (http://realitysandwich.com/node/482)
2. From the Wikipedia:
"Freelancers Union provides benefits and advocacy for independent workers. Membership in Freelancers Union is more than 80,000 in New York with more than 140,000 nationwide. This includes the freelancers, consultants, independent contractors, temps, part-timers, contingent employees and the self-employed that make up one-third of the American workforce. Because they are employed in nontraditional arrangements, these independent workers do not have access to employer-based insurance. Therefore, Working Today, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, launched Freelancers Union in 2001. Freelancers Union has created a portable benefits delivery system, linking benefits to individuals, rather than to employers, so independent workers can maintain benefits as they move from job to job and project to project.
The social safety net that followed Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal consisted of employer-based benefits, most crucially health and disability insurance and savings for retirement. That system does not meet the needs of the freelance workforce. Freelancers Union aims to provide a new, flexible safety net, by linking benefits to the individual rather than to the employer.
In addition to providing a flexible safety net in the form of portable benefits, the Union tries increase the visibility of independent worker, bringing issues that concern freelancers to the attention of media and policy makers. From tax relief—independent workers bear a greater tax burden than traditional employees—to unemployment and worker’s compensation, Freelancers Union advocates for legal reform on these issues.
Sara Horowitz, founder of the Freelancers Union, does not believe in a Canadian-style single-payer health care system, she said on WNYC's radio program, the Brian Lehrer show. Individuals should be able to buy insurance through groups like the Freelancers Union that would give them bargaining power against insurance companies, she said. They should get assistance through vouchers or a refundable tax credit if they can't afford it.
Under the labor laws, the Freelancers Union can't engage in collective bargaining over wages or working conditions, said Horowitz. The entertainment unions can today, because they were grandfathered in. But collective bargaining was a "moment in history", she told Lehrer. Lehrer said that, judging by listener phone calls, the biggest problem freelancers had with the Freelancers Union was that they couldn't meet the Union's definition of freelancer, which requires that they work at least 20 hours a week in one of seven industries." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freelancers_Union)