The idea of more people opting for self-employment and working from home via the Net intrigued me enormously in the first three or four years of FW's existence and gave rise to much discussion. As a consequence, the whole idea intrigued me so much that I decided to start such a business (Handlo Music Limited) even though I already had a business which gaves me a modest, but sufficient, income. Handlo Music (www.handlo.com) now has a team of eight or nine people working from home in six countries, and sells sheet music to choirs in over 50 countries (the most recent customer-choir being from Latvia -- now on the Net, I'm pleased to see). I am, in fact, quite surprised that more businesses are not on the Net. So I was most interested to read a review of Daniel H. Pink's book, "Free Agent Nation" in the Financial Times today, which suggests that my slightly pessimistic view was unfounded. (The "Free Agent Nation" means the US, of course.) So here's a paraphrase of the review (by David Honigman) which may be of interest to FWers: <<<< FREE AGENT NATION (Daniel H. Pink, Warner Books, 2001) Former speech-write for Al Gore examines self-employment from many different angles. It grew out of an article in Fast Company magazine. Despite the demise of the "New Economy" which turned out to be much the same as the old, Daniel Pink identifies several factors which are driving the rise of self-employment or free agency. He defines a "free agent" as (a) a project-based freelance soloist worker; (b) a temporary worker, or (c) someone with a microbusiness. He thinks that one in four workers in the US are such (and one in eight in the UK). [KH -- This last ratio surprised me, but a recent British Telecom research report estimates that about 1.5 million people in the UK work from home. Not all of these will be self-employed, of course, but the figure seems to suggest that Pink's estimate is probably not far wrong for the UK.] The cluster of causes of a rise in for much more self-employment are the shorter lifetimes of commercial strategies and the firms themselves, particularly big firms, the consequent crumbling of the social contract of work whereby employers reward loyalty with life-long jobs and, more recently, the potentialities of the Internet and of the low cost of the necessary equipment such as the personal computer and mobile phone. When academics discuss self-employment they have one of two mental models in mind. One is that self-employment has been forced on someone and consists of dispirited, atomised victims who would really like to re-enter employment by traditional firms. He bemoans the fate of temp slaves, with badly-paid demoralising work, and those perma-temps, stuck in administrative limbo and tantalised with the prospect of permanent jobs that never quite materialise. The other is that the self-employed consist of highly liberated self-dependent individuals. Either of these may be true for some. For many, Pinks avers, the reality is closer to Tarzan swinging through the jungle, leaping from project to project in a mixture of hope and desperation. In addition, free agents face the problems of lack of health benefits, arbitrary zoning laws that prevent some sorts of work being done at home, and the difficulties of impenetrable tax codes. However, the rising number of free agents (now about 33 million in the US) is now becoming a powerful pressure group. [KH: in the UK recently, an association of independent software consultants have been appealing against the ruling of the government income tax authorities that, if they work for any length of time for a firm, they should be regarded as being employed, and taxed as such. The courts found in favour of the authorities, but have forced them to re-write their definition of employment. It seems probable therefore that there'll be more scope for the self-employed to so arrange their status and contracts with firms temporarily employing them in order to be considered self-employed and, thus, to offset many expenses against earnings.] For some, there are the considerable psychological drawbacks of self-employment of loneliness and insecurity. For loneliness, Pink advocates networks of contacts and temporary alliances of collaboration. For insecurity, it remains to be seen just how much sub-contracting will continue if and when firms face economic downsides. >>>> Keith Hudson ___________________________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org> 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727; mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________
