The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) is organizing a workshop about best practices on organising and defending self-employed workers. Speakers will discuss new protection for self-employed workers in Europe and talk about the reality and the trade union challenges in Poland. Topics on the agenda also include the opportunities and obstacles for the trade union movement in the organisation of self-employed workers, like organising workers from platforms (for example the case of UBER in France) and organising self-employed workers in the artistic sectors in Finland.

Speakers will be mapping opportunities and barriers for trade unions to organise self-employed workers and try to find a path towards an action plan on organising self-employed workers with a proposal for the ETUC – Executive Committee. The participants will also be presented to the methodology of the research “Identifying good practices but also barriers for atypical workers to be represented by trade unions”.

Participating experts and initiatives are inter alia: Thiébaut Weber (ETUC Confederal Secretary), Dearbhal Murphy (International Federation of Actors), Leonard Paduret (Federația Cultură și Mass-Media FAIR – MediaSindRomania), Lionel Fulton (Labour Research Department) and  Thiéabaut Weber (ETUC Confederal Secretary).

Participating from the EFJ are John Toner and Michael Hirschler from the Freelance Expert Group.