“Due to a lack of understanding and misrepresentation, many people presume self-employed people are playing the system or at worst, that we’re tax dodgers fiddling the system. Had a union like Community not existed for us when coronavirus hit, that perception may have persisted and the government wouldn’t have been forced to offer us support package us through the earlier part of the pandemic.”
“The best part of self-employment is being able to choose who I work with. I choose to work for teams with strong ethics, a desire to make positive change, and who have a realistic chance of doing so.”
“When you’re self employed, if there’s no work to do, you’re effectively unemployed. But there’s no support for freelancers who are momentarily unemployed. We can’t claim job seekers allowance, because seeking a new customer isn’t the same as seeking regular employment.”
” For much of the past two years I’ve been able to work from wherever I wanted and dial the work up and down as I saw fit. But this flexibility, and the perceived freedom that comes with it, throws up a whole ton of risk.”
“Whilst other self-employed people could apply for Government grants, the fact that I’d been self-employed for just under a year meant that I was ineligible for these schemes.”
“I’ve seen many business owners forced into self-employment because they work for larger organisations who see self-employed subcontractors as a cheap way to avoid paying minimum wage.”
“Sometimes I’ve heard it said that ‘even self-employed people need a union’. I disagree. Especially self-employed people need a union.”
“I enjoy the unpredictability of working by and for myself. It has given me a sense of responsibility and self-worth that I never got from being employed.”
