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The Open 2018 Conference took place at the Conway Hall on July 26th and 27th.

I was invited to speak at a workshop session on “Solving the crisis of the Gig Economy” together with my colleague Lieza Dessain from SMart in Belgium and Danny Spitzberg from CoLab in the States. The session was facilitated by Alice Casey from NEF.

The videos of the open space sessions at the conference are now available at https://open.coop/2018/08/26/open-2018-videos-open-space-sessions/ or you can watch my contribution below

Working Together, a new report authored by myself, Pat Conaty and Cilla Ross was launched on tuesday 20th March 2018 at the Urdd in Cardiff

The UK is failing its ‘precarious’ workers says new report:-

Britain is failing its growing army of self-employed workers according to a new report released today (Tuesday 20 March).

With 7.1 million workers engaged in ‘precarious’ employment and 77 per cent of the self-employed living in poverty, the report ‘Working Together: Trade Union and Co-operative Innovations for Precarious Work’ calls for increased protection for those operating in the so-called gig economy.  

“Not only do they have almost no security, but while the average employed worker is losing out year by year in real terms, the self-employed are doing even worse, earning less each year in cash terms,” said co-author Alex Bird. “1.7 million of those in precarious employment are earning less than the national minimum wage, with no real enforcement of the law, and the self-employed are not even covered by the existing legislation.” Continue reading →

In Britain, along with Brexit, we are seeing a change to our economy through a huge rise in the number of people working as self-employed. It is currently at around 4.8m, which is over 15% of the workforce and is set to outnumber those in the public sector by 2018.

The UK’s flexible labour market is not only hugely productive, contributing over £255bn to the economy every year; it is also one of our greatest competitive advantages. This is five times Britain’s Brexit bill. In people terms it is larger than the public sector, yet it tends to be disregarded by policy makers and the self-employed have little bargaining or political power.

The growth in self employment isn’t restricted to the UK, but is happening across the world, across Europe and in North America. A fledgling freelancing movement is starting to emerge as workers across borders are joining together in solidarity and co-operation.

In 2016 Co-operatives UK published a report called ‘Not Alone – trade union and co‑operative solutions for the self-employed’. It recommended a partnership approach between unions, co-ops and mutuals. Partly as a result of this report, the British trade union Community has formed a partnership with the shared workspace co-operative, Indycube. Both have strong links in Wales and a strong focus on the growing self-employed workforce. Continue reading →

Co-operators and elected representatives from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland met for the first time on Feb 5^th 2016 at the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh to discuss how to take forward the co-operative agenda in their regions.

The private meeting, organised jointly by the Cross Party Groups’ secretariats, myself, Erskine Holmes and James Proctor featured members of the Cross-Party Groups in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. A previous meeting held in Cardiff in 2012 had only had Members from two of the three regions able to attend. Continue reading →

Just got this message from Steve Garrett of Cultural Concerns in Cardiff:-

Dear all

I’m back in Cardiff  from Calais (Ben from Parsnipship that I went out with is back tomorrow) after some pretty knackering days working with many volunteers from all over Europe, chopping vegetables, washing up etc. and distributing food in the camps.

‘The Jungle’ camp is a muddy and depressing place, people living in tents and shacks, and because no one’s sure how long they’ll be there, some little shops and cafes have even sprung up… and two ramshackle churches.
Although we were doing ‘good work’ (probably served at least 1000 meals a day, mostly to young men) I felt angry and ashamed that UK government has spent millions building a high security fence around the port, but nothing to improve the terrible conditions for the desperate 6 thousand (maybe more, and more coming for sure) in the camp.

They head to the UK because, amongst other reasons, of our reputation for fairness and tolerance! Now people are feeling stuck in the camp, with hope (that essential quality of life) fading.

Will get together with Ben when he’s back for a debrief and to prepare a more detailed bulletin about the situation for people who are interested.
I also intend to lobby Welsh Government to take more of a stand (and more action) on this totally inhumane situation. Let me know if you’d like to be involved

Steve

Follow Steve @ http://www.culturalconcerns.org.uk
Follow Ben @ https://theparsnipship.co.uk

These links to recent articles in The Guardian give an accurate picture of the situation in the Calais refugee camp.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/10/calais-jungle-refugee-camp-volunteer-conditions

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/07/calais-french-migrant-camps-refugee-crisis

The only difference is that the pictures in the photo essay were obviously taken in summer – imagine the same scenes ankle deep in mud under grey rainy skies to get a sense of what it looks like now.