Reducing disparities between employed and self employed

European labour and social laws and culture are the result of a long process of development focused round the needs of the industrial era, in which the overwhelming preponderance of work was a relationship between a dominant employer and a relatively powerless employee. The very language of employment discussion reflects this, with its emphasis on "worker protection", and is deeply conditioned by the assumption that the employer has all the power and most of the responsibility.

One illuminating example of this is the framing of European "labour inspection" regulations, where the assumption is that the employer controls what work is done in what ways, in what places and at what times. Another underlies our assumptions about occupational health and safety, which places all or most of the responsibility on an employer, and has little to say about either the self-managing employee or the self employed worker. People who seek self-employment are by definition self-managing. Since self-management is both popular and increasing, urgent attention is needed to better understand both the workplace and the labour market from the standpoint of home-based self employed workers.

Workers who actively prefer self employment have already opted out of the old labour market. They have a low propensity to join employer or worker representative organisations and no time to spare to get involved in committee processes or multi-layer negotiations. Policy makers have a duty to recognise and respond to this in positive ways. The social partner organisations may - or may not - choose to invest effort to try to engage with, enroll and support the new enterprises and workers. If they do so they will find it more rewarding to emphasise support for new ways of working rather than defence of custom and practice. Custom and practice are exactly what the new enterprises and the new self-employed and teleworkers are innovating against.