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Some claim that freelancing, self-employment, whatever you want to call it, is surging in developed economies. For example: More...

ICA Executive Director Ken Phillips spoke at a ‘Liberty’ conference in Sydney over the weekend. With over 350 people in attendance and with more than 70 speakers it was a stimulating, ideas-packed weekend. Not everyone agreed with each other, but all present agreed on the right to speak freely.

Ken talked about how we at ICA have used the Australian Constitution to defend individual liberty, specifically the right of people to be self-employed. You might recall last year our:  More...

Last week, our Executive Director, Ken Phillips, contemplated some ‘revolutionary’ thoughts around self-employment as part of the summer break ‘think’ process.  

Trump
But those thoughts are minor compared with President-elect Donald Trump’s proposals for self-employed people in the USA. According to Forbes magazine and CBSNews,  Trump is going to open the tax floodgate for the self-employed, allowing them to access the 15 per cent tax rate he intends to apply to companies.  More...

At ICA, we come across all sort of weird attacks on the self-employed. But one of the strangest is that we ‘screw over ourselves’. That was the argument mounted in California’s self-described ‘premier monthly business publication’, Comstock.

The ‘save us from ourselves’ argument was essentially the justification for Australia’s recent (fortunately failed) attempt to destroy the businesses of 35,000 owner-drivers. Lawyers are preparing the case for the class action to recover losses. Info here.  More...

The debate never seems to stop about whether being an independent worker is a good or bad thing.

Californian regulators and the Teamsters Union seem intent on forcing ride-sharing workers to be employees. There’s a $12 million lawsuit against Lyft  and Uber is involved in long drawn-out Californian litigation. Further, Californian lawmakers are looking to make it very difficult to work in the ‘gig’ economy.  More...

ICA is proud of its efforts over the last seven years arguing for the unfair contract laws for small business people. We’ve said that we’re delighted that the Turnbull government is moving forward with the laws. And we’re thankful to the Senate and to Senators for making sure the laws will have a wide application.  More...

There’s no question that the status of independent contractors is under massive attack in the USA from regulators, courts and activist lawyers. We’ve been following this for some time.

The giant transport company FedEx has for years been fighting to defend the independent contractor status of its drivers. But, in California, FedEx has now agreed to pay $228 million in compensation. This follows a 2014 Californian court ruling that FedEx ‘misclassified’ its drivers as independent contractors.  More...

You’d think the Canadians would be pleased. Canada’s jobless rate has just dropped further to 6.6 per cent after adding 34,500 jobs in the last month. But this is entirely accounted for by the fact that the number of self-employed individuals has gone up by 41,000. However according to this report this is terrible. The article claims that ‘self-employed does not equal making money’. What planet is this author on?  More...

Since 2012 ICA has been tracking the extraordinary debate happening in the UK about the ‘evils’ of self-employment. The debate was first ignited by the UK Trades Union movement. UK self-employment has doubled since 1975 to be now 15 per cent of the workforce (4.5 million people). Incredibly, UK unions say this is socially destructive.

Earlier this year a union-orientated think-tank, the Resolution Foundation, made similar claims.   More...

Ken Phillips has recently been in Washington for discussions with several organizations about independent contractor rights and labour law in general. He was surprised to discover the extent to which the basic right to join or not join a union is denied in the ‘land of the free’. According to Ken, 'it's  amazingly oppressive Federal law'. More...