Abstract
Self-Employment as Precarious Work: A European Perspective is an edited volume of contributions based on discussions at an international meeting at Utrecht University in 2016. This meeting marked the finalization of the research project ‘Self-Employed without personnel: between freedom and insecurity’, begun in 2013
The editors are Wieteke Conen, Assistant Professor at the Social Law department of Leiden University, and Joop Schippers, Professor of Labour Economics at Faculty of Law, University of Utrecht, and Economics and Governance and Affiliated Researcher at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute. In fourteen chapters, written by 20 contributors from different disciplines like (labour) economics, sociology, law, social and political sciences, as well as public administration, the book examines one of the increasingly important socio-political challenges of European Union Member States, namely the ‘precariousness’ of work of the self-employed.
The aim of the book is to ‘investigate the scale, nature and implications of self-employment as precarious work in Europe.’ This is done by addressing research questions that have to date received limited attention in the scientific literature with the intent of adding to the existing knowledge in two ways. The first concerns the limited insight into recent developments in nature and quality of self-employment in Europe; the main focus being to what extent self-employed are self-sufficient entrepreneurs and where and why more precarious forms of self-employment emerged. By considering ‘precariousness’ as more than merely earned income (i.e. also including social risk coverage), the second purpose of this study is to establish where and how precarious self-employment relates to systems of social security and institutional surroundings. The overarching purpose is, therefore, ‘to provide evidence-based information to address current and future challenges related to the changing nature of self-employment and demonstrates where, when and why self-employment emerges as precarious work in Europe.’
Another important dimension of the book is to study self-employment as precarious work for societal reasons and not merely scientific ones. Considering that policy debates tend to be dominated by a strong emphasis on the promotion of entrepreneurship and the encouragement of self-employment as an alternative to unemployment, the idea is to recognize its potential problems, such as low and insecure incomes, poor social security and pensions coverage, low levels of training as well as deterioration in self-employed job quality. By presenting a variety of current information on the situation of self-employed persons in a changing labour market, the book aims to support this political debate and to provide valuable information for policy makers and other stakeholders.
The book is divided into three parts. The first part (Chapters 2 – 4) sketches the theoretical foundations and context of self-employment as a precarious work situation. The second part (Chapters 5 – 11) reports empirical studies on self-employment and precarious work in Europe, and the third part (Chapters 12 – 14) addresses the implications of findings and puts forward suggestions for future research.
Content-wise, the authors present the historical developments concerning self-employment for several EU Member States with the idea of creating a reference point. They compare statistics, outline different trends and attempt to determine background reasons for recent developments. More specifically, the reader can learn that while self-employment in the past was characterised as a small, stable or declining segment of the workforce, met mainly in agriculture, traditional crafts, liberal professions and in small businesses, new occupations include a wider range of possible working fields. This lead to an increase of the share of (own-account, no personnel) self-employed workers in several European countries, making them an even more heterogeneous group, which presents a challenge for researchers and policy makers. Moreover, larger parts of the population now experience self-employment at some point during their working life, as a growing share of women and young people is entering self-employment. These in- and outflows have additionally become more dynamic due to various factors, for instance, labour market changes, new business models, active labour market policy measures, economic growth and recession fluctuations, migrations, etc. Especially with regard to women, this might also be a consequence of having better opportunities to combine (perhaps short-hours) work and private life with responsibilities for children or dependent relatives. The authors attempt to find an answer whether the increase of self-employment in recent decades reflects genuine entrepreneurism or whether it is a reflection of growth in poor quality, precarious work due to a lack of traditional employment opportunities while people try to remain in employment by undertaking insecure work as freelancers.
This question belongs in the context of precariousness, where the authors take various differing definitions as a starting point, but these nevertheless essentially converge. The position of the self-employed and the risk of precariousness depends mostly on the degree of certainty of continuing employment (i.e. secure and stable work opposed to irregular orders), on the control over the labour process (i.e. autonomy), income adequacy while working and financial resilience tied to the amount of time one can bridge a period without income, as well as social (or regulatory) protection. The latter reflects not only the social security benefits and their accessibility, but also labour law protection, especially in case of bogus self-employment. These are increasingly associated with the notions of involuntary, dependent and precarious self-employment, where it is attempted to transfer costs, risks and liabilities on the self-employed. Moreover, this concerns also the dependent self-employed or employee-like persons, who are in hybrid forms of work (also due to emergence of platforms).
In reviewer’s opinion, the authors vividly explain why the social protection aspect is of utmost importance for precariousness. Welfare states in Europe have taken employees as the focus of law and regulation in the second half of the 20th century, where the self-employed have often been excluded from access to certain insurance-based social protection schemes. On top of a very brief overview of EU legislation related to social protection for the self-employed, selected EU Member States with slightly different social security systems are compared, which forms one part of the broader (distinctive) national institutions arrangements setting that is visible in the book. More specifically, issues of disability and pension insurance are discussed, not only from a statutorily analysis, but also empirical findings from interviews, which shed a light on some of the difficulties faced by self-employed persons in reality. Moreover, the authors assess the position of older persons and the (in)voluntary nature of their self-employment, which may be tied to other risks of precariousness, when income replacement benefits may be insufficient, reflecting lower contributions due to lower income and consequent poverty in old age.
The latter may be the consequence of considerably more polarised income distribution between self-employed (in general) in comparison to employees, with larger proportions of the self-employed at both extremes (very low and very high earnings). The authors also take into account the hours worked, where the self-employed on average work longer, making it typical to earn considerably less per hour than their employee counterparts. This is related to their control over the day or hourly rates and the issue of price setting. Aspects like these are weighed against the advantages, like self-responsibility, working without hierarchies, flexible working hours, economic motives, personal fulfilment, own creativity, work-life balance and ‘being your own boss’, where then (the overall) job satisfaction and job quality is also measured. This is described as the ‘paradox of individualisation’, where the self-employed enjoy more autonomy and freedom, yet they are also ‘exposed to multiple risks of precariousness and atomisation.’
It might be interesting to note, that various categories among the self-employed are assessed from the perspective of precariousness in the reviewed book. For instance, the group of the precarious self-employed with migrant background (and their share) is also taken into account. These persons might be condemned to sectors with low qualification requirements and low income. As such, establishing a link to the level of achieved education and the question - whether the income differences vis-à-vis natives then disappear - is tested.
Even the perspective of willingness towards joining (collective) interest organizations (i.e. unions) by the self-employed is analysed. In this respect, the authors do not neglect the important FNV Kunsten case before the ECJ, where the issue of collective agreements for the self-employed is assessed under EU law.
The authors carefully name some factors that might result in somewhat skewed results. For instance, reference is made to the ‘selection effect’ in the sense that research and the datasets used might exclusively monitor ‘survivors’ among the self-employed and not account for those who gave up on the way. Moreover, their income is ‘notoriously hard to measure and compare’ for various reasons. This also means there are possibilities of underreported income among the self-employed persons with potential to substantially affect the findings related to the stability and the overall amount of income earned, thus blurring the differences between the self-employed themselves and in comparison to employees. Both factors influence the study of dimensions of precariousness.
The final part of the book outlines rather complicated (social) policy challenges. These depend mostly on whether to approach self-employment from the perspective of entrepreneurship with market regulation on fair competition, transparency, equal access, or from the perspective of labour market flexibility, having in mind social protection and decent living, where effective coverage for workers in all forms of employment, in order to prevent and reduce poverty, inequality and enhance income security, is sought. This will most likely depend on the perception of self-employed, where I would like to use a lovely Cinderella analogy excerpt from the book, that is, whether they are ‘having the time of (her) life’, or whether they are a ‘lonely wallflower(s) waiting by the wall without the willpower to face the music at all’.
The book has several noteworthy strengths. The theoretical and empirical parts are well linked, with an abundance of references to previous scientific achievements that relate to the chosen topic(s). The book is also multifaceted - in the sense, that the precarious position of the self-employed is analysed through a plethora of aspects (age, gender, nationality, income, social protection, etc.). An additional important strength is the empirical research being conducted in EU Member States (i.e. Austria, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom) with differently conceived notions of a welfare state, and where the influence of particular institutional elements can be observed. The empirical research findings are based on precise methodology, with a rather large sample size of data collected through questionnaires and surveys, which is in a large part analysed by the use of statistical regression model analysis and the results eloquently presented, more specifically with tables, graphs and commentary. The book is also written in an approachable manner. However, the theoretical and trending notions are repeated on several occasions by multiple authors, although this is to be somewhat expected. Unfortunately, as the authors concluded, the extent of vulnerability of self-employed still remains ‘sketchy, blurred and incomplete’, along with the understanding of factors responsible for it. Receiving an answer to this question will require more in-depth research than the statistics collected by various agencies allow since the measurement of precarious work ‘is more complicated in the case of the self-employed than among wage workers.’
Overall, the reviewed book represents a significant enrichment of the discussion on the topic of precarious self-employment. It is therefore recommended to a wide range of readers, especially to those wishing to gain insight and advance their knowledge in this field, while also being particularly relevant for researchers and policy makers.