Self-employment. Reflections on a model of representation for an emerging collective interest

Abstract

In self-employment there is a heterogeneity of workers and workers, ranging from the advanced tertiary sector (the so-called Knowledge Economy Cognitivism Capitalism), to the regulated professions and to the non-regulated professions.

In recent years the category has undergone a swirling and sudden change, whose characteristic traits are greater vulnerability and destabilization. From this stems a marked need for representation, which has led part of the doctrine to define it as a system in countertrend with respect to the processes of disintermediation, which characterize the system of representation of work subordinated or in the political sphere.

The normative indicator of this phase is undoubtedly the law n. 81 of 22 May 2017, better known as the Statute of self-employment, which in particular at the art. 17 establishes the first advisory body, permanently established at the Ministry of Labor and Social Policies, with the task of coordinating and monitoring interventions in the field of self-employment, among whose members will also include representatives designated by the comparatively more representative associations of self-employment at national level .

However, the representative system of self-employed workers has not only never been the subject of agreements and protocols signed by sector associations, in a similar way to employer associations (although the Factory Pact of 9 March 2018 seems to mark the start of a new phase), but neither structured doctrinal proposals or nor collective bargaining exist.

So in this article there is a reflection on what could be configured as a tertium genus of representation.