A new US Department of Labor rule restores protections for misclassified workers and could help reduce the precarious status of freelance journalists, Samantha Sanders of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. These protections are sorely needed in an industry buffeted by layoffs. Freelance workers are organizing to make sure needed reforms like the new DOL rule stick.
The difficult economic conditions faced by newspaper staff these days are well known. In 2023, through November, there were nationally a total of 2,681 editorial job cuts, according to the global outplacement and business and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.
Two examples are a case in point. The Arena Group, publisher of Sports Illustrated, communicated its intentions to potentially lay off the entire staff over three months. Los Angeles Times management announced plans to lay off 115 workers, more than 20% of the paper’s journalists.
Fortunately, amid these layoffs, freelancers are organizing. Such solidarity efforts in an industry undergoing drastic restructuring requires creativity, according to Abigail Higgins, a freelance journalist and co-chair of the Freelance Solidarity Project, which is the digital media division of the National Writers Union (NWU), focused on organizing freelance media workers. Why? “We are dispersed and face anti-worker laws,” she says.
How does the creativity of which Higgins speaks show up? One way is through the Freelance Isn’t Free Act, which became law in New York City in 2017. Forms of that law have followed in New York state; Illinois; Columbus, Ohio; and Los Angeles, California. In the Golden State, a form of the Freelance Isn’t Free Act is on the legislative agenda, thanks to state Senator Scott Weiner (D-San Francisco), who introduced Senate Bill 988, the Freelance Worker Protection Act, on Jan. 31. Such labor reform efforts are gathering steam to set minimum work standards for freelance journalists, create a comprehensive rate-sharing database for digital media workers, and strengthen their intellectual property rights.
Eric Thurm is legislative coordinator for the NWU. The Freelance Isn’t Free Act requires employers to provide freelancers a written contract, full and timely payment, and protection from discrimination and retaliation for the exercise of such rights, according to Thurm.
Without such labor standards, freelancers are subject to exploitation, including but not limited to late and partial remuneration for their work. “The core tenets of the Freelance Isn’t Free Act would not read as especially big guarantees,” Thurm says, “but I think that speaks to how precarious freelancing actually is. For example, getting a written contract for one’s work might seem obvious to people who have not freelanced.”
Protecting freelance media workers from retaliation if they try to negotiate higher pay or better working conditions with a publication is a real danger. The Freelance Isn’t Free Act also protects freelancers from a publication paying the agreed upon fee late.
“Generally speaking, payment is within 30 days of completion of freelancers’ work,” according to Thurm. Publications that violate an agreement for prompt payment can be liable for up to twice the amount owed to freelancers under the Act.
Information is power at work. For instance, knowing what fellow workers earn, all things equal, can create the conditions for improving everybody’s pay rates. When the opposite prevails, employers can and do hide pay information to decrease compensation. “It is hard to know if you are being offered a rate that is fair or not,” says Higgins, whose reporting centers on gender, inequality, and labor. “That makes it really challenging for freelancers to make a living.”
Take rental housing. A record half of all US renters experience unaffordable prices, according to a new report by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. The sharpest rise in unaffordability since 2019 was for households making $30,000 to $74,999 a year. As a freelance journalist for decades, this reporter has never earned annual wage-income close to $30,000.
A challenging work relationship with employers has big impacts on freelancers’ capacities to organize as well. What can they do? “There are a few different things that we are doing about pay rates to improve that situation,” says Higgins. One is building a pay rate database that freelance journalists generate, a regular part of their work process. The data includes publication name, scope of work, i.e., word length, and compensation. Moreover, the database creates a simple and powerful tool for freelance journalists to read and learn what their peers are earning from other publications.
What is unknown to dispersed freelance journalists disadvantages them, as working alone curtails communication with fellow workers. Under such labor conditions of isolation, chats around a water cooler, say, in a newsroom where full-time journalists ply their trade is not part of the freelance equation. In other words, labor remoteness is an employer’s dream and a nightmare for wage earners. “A lack of pay transparency is the breeding ground for inequity,” Higgins says. That burden falls hardest on working-class freelancers who are female, nonwhite and queer, according to her.
“There is a real lack of public awareness over just how difficult it is for freelance journalists to earn a living,” Higgins says. Accordingly, educating the public about this occupational economic inequality is high on the union’s list of priorities. Higgins notes that unpaid time to research and pitch publications is part of this equation. “Many if not most freelance journalists are unable to make a living with the earnings they receive,” according to Higgins. “A lot of us consult or work in coffee shops or other hustles and side jobs to make ends meet.” Some term this the “gigification,” or irregular pay, of the economy.
More firings of journalists—like those at the Los Angeles Times and Sports Illustrated—are likely to further swell the ranks of freelance journalists. That can and does benefit employers seeking to harm labor and hike profits. “Layoffs of full-time journalists means that publications can contract with freelancers, who do not earn benefits and pay on a per article, or piece work, basis,” Higgins says. “The takeaway is to cut the cost of producing journalism.”
This situation cries out for increasing the amount of public information about the connective tissue between journalism and democracy. Reaching out in this way to digital and print news consumers with a focus on informing them about the labor conditions of the journalism producers is a potential bridge of solidarity, a critical part of social movements for progressive change. There are recent examples to emulate. As has become a refrain of teachers’ unions: “Teachers’ working conditions are students’ learning conditions.”
Intellectual property—or writers’ right to own their work—is another terrain of struggle. Harmed by news aggregators like Facebook and Google, many local publications are in part dealing with that loss of revenue by curtailing freelancers’ rights to their intellectual property. “There have been a proliferation of what is called ‘work for hire’ agreements,” Higgins says, “which basically strips freelancers of all of their rights to their work.”
“If a freelancer wants to take an article and turn it into a book or serialized podcast, or a studio wants to turn an article into a film,” Higgins says, “the freelancer has lost all rights to the original work. The publication owns the rights. That is egregious when we live in a world where freelancers spend days, weeks, months, and even years working on a story that earns them a few hundred dollars.” By contrast, industries such as Big Tech and Big Pharma profit insanely thanks to IP policies.
“Freelancers should get fair pay and fair contracts,” according to Higgins, “and retain the rights for their work, with publications receiving exclusive or first rights for 30 or 60 days, but not forever.”
Moving forward, freelancers are organizing to improve on their existing protections—and to respond more effectively to current challenges.
It is plain as day that employers will not concede such improved labor conditions for freelancers without a fight. The economics of this are straightforward, as hedge funds and billionaire-owned media shred news media infrastructure. Employers can and do tend to pay freelancers less than company employees, who are often unionized and covered by a collective bargaining agreement. Further, freelancers are responsible to pay the employer and employee share of Social Security. Freelancers also lack access to employer-provided health-care insurance.
One area where improvements to the recent Freelance Isn’t Free bills that have passed is to lower the thresholds in terms of how much work a freelancer has to do before provisions of the Act take effect. Another priority is establishing unemployment insurance payments for nontraditional workers, from home cleaners to freelancers—a measure that was briefly adopted in 2020 at the height of the COVID pandemic, but which has since been rescinded. Ultimately, Thum contends, security for freelancers requires establishing national standards for freelancers’ working conditions.
Seth Sandronsky lives and works in Sacramento. He is a journalist and member of the Pacific Media Workers Guild. Email sethsandronsky@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2024
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