News and Background

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2017, Vol. 23(3) 359–365
Reinventing the world of work ª The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1024258917707870
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The ‘uberisation’ of work is bringing many decision-makers, unions, employers, workers and
citizens to question and even reinvent the world of work, as well as to seek ways to guarantee
sustainable and accessible social protection.1 Many parallel developments, mainly linked to soci-
ety, markets and digitalisation, have led to this situation. In this article, we will briefly present
these developments, focusing on the four main actions we propose in response to these challenges.
These recommendations emerge from our long experience in the cooperative world, and SMart.
These past years Sandrino Graceffa has been leading SMart, a cooperative of autonomous workers
who wish to make a living from their skills. It was created in Belgium in 1998 to support artists and
has since serviced over 100,000 people from different sectors and in eight other European coun-
tries. As a shared enterprise, it allows people to work as freely as freelancers and as safely as
salaried workers. SMart provides an online platform that allows invoicing and simplifies admin-
istrative accountancy and legal issues for autonomous workers. Based on the principle of mutua-
lisation, it continuously reinvests benefits in the development of new services which include a
salary guarantee fund, adapted insurances, co-working spaces, advice, training and legal expertise.
The main societal evolutions having an impact on the world of work include non-standard family
structures (the increasing prevalence of patchwork and single-parent families) and geographic
mobility, putting distance between members of a family (one doesn’t necessarily live where one
was born and brought up, meaning less direct support from one’s family). The massive increase in
women’s labour market participation has created new needs in terms of child care and household
services, which are being increasingly externalised and merchandised, thereby creating new jobs.
Professional and life aspirations have also changed greatly: a growing number of people aim to
achieve the right work-life balance (to make time for their families, activism, and engaging in
personal development, again creating new forms of economic activity). New priorities such as the
well-being of the planet (sustainability) and increasing social inequalities challenge the behaviour
and ways of life of many individuals, with the result that they are increasingly engaged in com-
munity work, peer-to-peer activities and mutual support. For many reasons, steady employment is
no longer widely aspired to.
Furthermore, outsourcing and project-based management have increased the number of SMEs
and freelancers, while reducing the number of people working under open-ended contracts. This
puts pressure on workers (widespread logic of ‘do more for less pay and be happy to have a job’),
increases part-time jobs and fuels the ‘working poor’ phenomenon. The decrease in open-ended
full-time employment also puts pressure on the accessibility of social protection and the economic
viability of our social protection systems.

1 This contribution is based on Sandrino Graceffa’s book, Refaire le monde . . . Du travail. Une alternative à
l’ube´risation de l’e´conomie, Les Éditions Repas, Valence, 2016.
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Given these trends, we observe new opportunities for civil society. While digitalisation has
certainly contributed to the atomisation of work (via platforms like Uber) and a further concen-
tration of wealth, it also enables peer-to-peer activities, solidarity initiatives and citizen self-
organisation. New forms of cooperativism and mutualism are to be seen in shared enterprises such
as SMart2 which build solidarity among freelancers who simply wish to make a living out of their
skills and competences and who prefer five clients rather than one employer. Furthermore, the
platform cooperativist model proposed by T Scholtz3 allows workers to create their own collec-
tively governed service platforms which redistribute the revenues generated by the platform to
those creating it (workers). These new opportunities echo the clear political and social need of
Western citizens for greater participation and transparency at all levels: work, wealth and
governance.

Four proposals to ‘reinvent the world of work’

Based on these trends, and our experience within SMart, we would like to put forward four
proposals for ‘reinventing the world of work’. The first consists of defending the right to conduct
social experiments at European level. The second proposes reconciling different forms of work and
workers by creating a REUPS (Re´gime europe´en universel de protection sociale, an EU-wide
universal social welfare system). The third encourages large-scale economic and social
cooperation to increase solidarity, while the fourth promotes a collaborative economy rather than
a predatory one.

The right to social experimentation in Europe

For almost 10 years, public policies have been promoting the development of social innovation.
Justifying this, it is pointed out that, while a whole arsenal of measures exists to promote techno-
logical innovation, very little is being done to encourage social innovation. Yet social innovation is
gradually becoming a new holy grail, the definitive solution to all ills in our overly rigid, overly
centralised, overly ‘old school’ organisations. Social innovation is a cornerstone of several
European funding programmes and an academic focus at some renowned business schools.
For us, the simplest definition of social innovation is the search for new ways – even if outside
our established institutional norms and rules – of fulfilling the socio-economic needs of a majority
and improving the well-being of everyone while preserving the general interest.
All forms of innovation must undergo a period of experimentation, allowing new solutions to be
tested for their relevance and effectiveness in solving the problem at hand. A further benefit of this
phase is to contain the risks inherent to any type of change, notably by involving all stakeholders in
the monitoring of the experiment.
Let’s take the example of SMart in France to illustrate the benefits of social experimentation.
When SMart was launched, we decided to concentrate on the performing arts – even though the
ultimate aim of the project, in France as in Belgium, is to extend its appeal well beyond the arts
sector (journalists, web professionals, teachers and coaches, consultants, etc.). The choice was
motivated by the sector’s obvious needs, but also because it can be preferable to start by specif-
ically addressing a complex problem. In this case the complexity arises partly from the specific
nature of performing artists’ temporary employment contracts, and partly from the fact that the

2 www.smartbe.be
3 www.platform.coop
Graceffa and de Heusch 361

profession is regulated in France. Companies regularly producing shows must obtain and regularly
renew a special licence. Two years after SMart was established, our application to renew our
licence was declined. This could have resulted in the total shutdown of the project, significant
problems for over 1000 engaged artists, and the redundancy of almost 20 staff. Years of effort were
threatened because an administrative authority understood neither our project nor our organisa-
tional mode, both of which were indeed new.
The main argument put forward by the authorities was that SMart was not a ‘real’ producer but
an intermediary between the ‘real’ producer and the artists. The ‘real’ producer, according to the
authorities, was the show’s organiser. SMart lodged an appeal against this ruling with the admin-
istrative tribunal and, after 18 months of legal proceedings, the decision was overturned and we
obtained our licence.
The positive effect for SMart was that any doubts about the reality of our role as an employer of
artists were removed. But at what cost? For almost two years, the entire SMart France team and its
board of directors had to work under pressure and in a state of total uncertainty (SMart was also
subject to over 20 inspections of all sorts: no infringements or irregularities were found and no
legal action was taken). Even though we had done nothing wrong, we had permanently to justify
what we were doing. SMart France spent more than €300,000 on these proceedings (lawyers’ fees,
time spent dealing with the inspections, various legal and regulatory bodies, etc.). It probably cost
the various administrative authorities involved at least half that amount, resulting in a cumulated
cost of close to €0.5m: an enormous sum. Financing a social experiment would most certainly not
have cost as much, even after factoring in the wages of the civil servants required to monitor it.
In hindsight, had we had the possibility to create a monitoring and evaluation body for what we
could have called a ‘social experiment’ involving all the stakeholders legitimately concerned by
the creation of SMart in France, we would certainly have had a more positive result in terms of
public interest.
The obvious advantage of setting up a specific regulatory framework for social experimentation
lies in creating the conditions necessary for generalising proven experiments. Moreover, while
citizens are becoming increasingly distrustful of institutions, co-constructing spaces involving
institutions and innovators would unquestionably better serve the public interest. It seems evident
that the regulatory framework for social experimentation should fall within a European framework

Reconciling different forms of work and workers by creating a REUPS (Régime européen
universel de protection sociale, a European universal social welfare system)
The organisation of different social welfare systems is a complex matter to grasp on a European
scale, being the result of an empirical construction never intended to be harmonised or unified
across borders. Although the level of protection differs across Europe according to the regime and/
or the country, the areas covered are generally the same: i.e. sickness and disability, unemploy-
ment, pensions and measures that help families (family allowances, housing benefits, single-parent
allowances, etc.). In some countries, higher levels of social welfare are offered in certain niche
sectors, the result of a historic willingness to increase their attractiveness in a context of full
employment (e.g. railway workers in France).
The differences between entitlement statuses, even though originating in eminently legitimate
social struggles, have become unjustifiably large with regard to the general and universal nature of
the risks covered. The proportion of poorly protected workers continues to grow, questioning the
legitimacy of maintaining higher levels of protection for certain workers. Not to address the need to
reform our social welfare system (to make it more inclusive) is not only unjust with respect to all
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workers, it is also dangerous: we risk seeing protection levels downgraded to the lowest common
denominator. Can we continue to treat risks related to sickness, unemployment and old age
differently according to status, while workers are increasingly forced to change social statuses
throughout their working life or even combine several different statuses at once?
Shouldn’t we try to simplify access to the social welfare system by distinguishing no more than
two categories in the active population: those who derive the majority of their income from labour,
and those who derive it from their assets?
This simplification would standardise social protection for all workers (employees, executives,
agricultural workers, the self-employed, temps, etc.), taking us in the same direction as several
current systems and reforms aimed at attaching rights (social gains) to people rather than to
employment contracts.
Given the increasing tendency towards hyper-mobile careers, this would also simplify matters.
While it is true that this increased mobility contributes to worker insecurity, in all probability it is
here to stay and needs to be taken into account. We must remain wary of neoliberals who attempt to
transfer the managerial concepts of ‘agility’ and ‘lean management’ to the social sphere. True,
production modes have evolved, as imposed by our globalised and digital world, and, evidently,
the conditions under which the workforce at large operates must follow suit: greater flexibility and
mobility are required. This evolution will however only be sustainable if we improve our social
systems, notably by strengthening ties between social rights and the individual person.
The prospect of constructing a political Europe is receding, inhibited by the rise of nationalism.
In this context, a European project centred solely on a neoliberal vision is bound to fail. The only
credible way forward to cement the Union is to create a social Europe. The sense of belonging,
essential to the emergence of a true European citizenship, cannot be left to the Erasmus programme
alone. The creation of a universal pillar of social welfare framework for all European workers is
what is needed to consolidate the foundations of the weakened European edifice in the long term.
One of the negative consequences of not having a unified European social protection status is the
low mobility of workers within the Union. Statistics show that the European Union offers significant
opportunities for those unable to find work at home. However, Europeans remain extremely static:
language, cultural and psychological barriers remain a reality. The lack of consistency between
employment contracts and statuses within the Union heightens these barriers. Introducing a universal
European social welfare system would guarantee all workers the security they lack today.

Encouraging large-scale economic and social cooperation to increase solidarity:

the beautiful ambition of the Bigre! project4
We firmly believe in the cooperative model as a way of reinventing the world of work. However,
for this model truly to succeed, it is necessary to pool existing experiences. This is exactly what we
are trying to achieve today with the Bigre! project in France.
Bigre! is an open network of cooperative businesses (including Oxalis, Coopaname, Grands
Ensemble, Vecteur Activités, SMartFr and SMartBe) that each provide shared spaces and practices
reflecting the arts and skills of each individual member (artists, gardeners, IT professionals,
interpreters, journalists, freelancers, shepherds, consultants, etc.). Linking up these cooperatives
creates a unique community of several thousand members whose aim is to mutually guarantee the
ability to pursue their respective careers and make a living from them. Acting in the form of a

4 www.bigre.coop
Graceffa and de Heusch 363

cooperative (economic, social and self-managed), Bigre! is a network in which such functions as
management, research, social welfare, finance, managing legal statuses of individuals, etc. are
shared. The aim is to create a strong political project that restores inter-professional solidarity and
cooperation, while refusing to disregard aspirations to work differently, i.e. that of a subordinate
employee or precarious self-employed.5
The similarity between SMart and the Coopératives d’Activités et d’Emploi (CAE; ENG:
business and employment cooperatives) movement might seem evident today, but that was not
the case in 2006. At that time, SMart was perceived in Belgium as an administrative convenience
for artists, while the CAEs were seen as a novel way to start a business via a real-life test phase.
Both were social innovators; CAEs in an assertive manner, SMart more silently. Of course, things
have since changed and this simplistic characterisation no longer holds.
The closeness of these projects rests on the strong belief, shared by many people within the
organisations that chose to participate in Bigre!, that our respective companies – mostly production
cooperatives – should strive to achieve a common goal: that of inventing a new entrepreneurship, a
new production mode, a new way of working. Of course, it is always possible to reduce our role to
the tangible services we provide to our members. These are so useful that they alone would suffice
to justify the need for our organisations.
However, the transformative ambition embodied by our cooperatives goes well beyond this func-
tional dimension. For over 20 years, the CAE movement and SMart, each on its own, have promoted
the autonomous worker, a new figure who differs from both conventional forms of individual entre-
preneurship and subordinated employment. Bigre! brings these two movements together.
This new path remains marginal, however, especially when compared to the million people
across France who have chosen a new variant of the self-employed status. ‘Auto-entrepreneur’ is
the most precarious form of work in the medium and long term. Its popularity relies solely on the
feeling that it is more profitable in the short term and it has been intensely promoted by a
succession of governments. It is obvious that our proposed alternatives are insufficiently known,
especially on the most disadvantaged fringes of the population. Our solutions and services should
be made available as widely as possible. In this context, member cooperatives working within
Bigre! want to engage in a dialogue that is both easy to understand (‘we can all become an
independent contractor within a cooperative’), and one which is socially responsible (‘my way
of working must not harm our social pact, which is based on redistributive solidarity’).
Within our organisations, individuals choose to team together, pooling services, e.g. adminis-
trative, accounting, financial, insurance, legal, IT, etc. but also sharing risks. Belonging to a single
company makes it possible for project owners to team up and fulfil orders that would be difficult to
access as an individual. Showing spontaneous solidarity, each entrepreneur can become the ambas-
sador of one or many others. We have observed that when a climate of trust is established all
manners of cooperation appear, including among people in the same line of work – as if the feeling
of belonging gradually replaces the spirit of competition, still promoted as a positive value in the
neoliberal vision of entrepreneurship.
The starting point of the Bigre! project is a simple idea: to leverage the positive impact of
sharing not only resources, but also know-how and networks. Why can’t these principles, which
are progressively becoming self-evident to individuals, be applied to companies and organisations?
What if we share our tools, knowledge and practices? What if we invent new solidarity mechan-
isms for all our members, regardless of which co-op they work for. What if we form a group strong

5 www.bigre.coop
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enough to provide totally digitalised administrative services and local support in all business areas
and in all countries? In France, in Belgium, in Europe – and then why not Africa? In a nutshell: a
form of globalisation based on solidarity.

Promoting a collaborative, non-predatory economy

It is difficult to provide just one definition of the collaborative economy, as it covers several
different – even opposing – aspects, ranging from predatory practices such as Uber to barter
services such as a local exchange trading system (LETS).
Many initiatives, thought by some to be part of the collaborative economy, actually originate in
social and solidarity economy movements (such as the first vehicle-sharing initiatives, or the
Cigales clubs), the forerunners of crowdfunding, knowledge exchange networks, solidarity food
stores, etc. These initiatives highlight that the economy cannot be simply reduced to markets and
profits generated by annuities, and that it can also exist outside the notion of ownership.
M Bauwens6 describes this new and dominant paradigm, taking into account the idea of
relocating production (notably to fab labs, micro-factories, urban agriculture, etc.) and the globa-
lisation and sharing of information and knowledge, i.e. beyond proprietary software (development
of open-source software, Wikipedia, etc.). He believes these two movements (local and global) can
contribute to the creation of a post-capitalist society based on communities that question the
ownership ideology by favouring new forms of exchanging and sharing goods, services and
information. It is a true hybridisation of resources obtained from exchanging and redistributing
goods, based on the principle of reciprocity. The manufacturing models of these communities are
far from the division of labour set out in the Fordist model. Some even see the emergence of a
post-employee society, although it is still not possible to clearly define the notion of a contributing
worker, who is both free but also very often interdependent on his/her peers.
On the opposite side of this new digital economy is the Silicon Valley model, in which personal
data collected from digital platform users (social networks, online purchases, etc.) are sold for
subsequent use in manipulating consumer behaviour and the use of goods and services, but also
even in influencing voting trends in presidential elections.
The company that best illustrates this predatory economy is undoubtedly Uber. The company
sees its role only in terms of developing and operating mobile applications that put users in touch
with drivers supplying transport services. Until recently, it did not consider Uber drivers as sub-
ordinates. But in 2015 and 2016, various authorities (including California, France and London)
ruled that Uber drivers were employees as they were economically and technologically dependent
on the service provided entirely by Uber.
150 years after the first cooperatives were established during the industrial revolution, we are
witnessing the birth of 2.0 cooperatives in a peer-to-peer and digital context. As M Lietaert explains7,
resistance to collaborative economy transnational monopolies is spreading just as rapidly and the
construction of a parallel not-for-profit collaborative economy is becoming a reality. The Platform
Cooperativism Conference organised by T Scholz and N Schneider in November 20158 in New York

6 M Bauwens in collaboration with J Lievens, Sauver le monde. Vers une e´conomie post-capitaliste avec le
peer to peer, Paris: Les Liens qui libèrent, 2015. See also the Peer to Peer Foundation’s website:
http://p2pfoundation.net/
7 M Lietaert, Homo cooperans 2.0. Changeons de cap vers l’e´conomie collaborative, Mons: Couleur
Livres, 2015.
8 http://platformcoop.net/
Graceffa and de Heusch 365

could be described as the first step in creating a movement of cooperative platforms aimed at helping
users take control of collaborative economy platforms, i.e. away from the hold of Silicon Valley
investors.
One of the difficulties of developing a collaborative economy based on the principles of sharing
and redistributive solidarity is securing investment for launching and scaling up projects. Even
Wikipedia, which relies solely on unpaid voluntary contributors, needs some funding to maintain a
reliable infrastructure, requiring it to ask regularly for donations.
Many projects using collaborative platforms need to achieve a certain usage level for their
economic value to cover their operating costs and the initial investment required to launch the
business in the first place. Mainstream investors are reluctant to invest in projects whose values are
directly or indirectly shared with users, as they are in search of future profitability or even a stock-
market listing. To develop a non-predatory collaborative economy, specific financial instruments
should be developed.
The public authorities have every reason to earmark certain lines of funding for such initiatives.
Tax breaks could also be created to fund cooperative platforms that contribute to the common
good. As to private funding, large social economy institutions, i.e. cooperative banks and mutual
societies, could modernise their original value systems through investing heavily in the new
collaborative-cooperative economy.
SMart looks forward to further debating these proposals, and even more to testing solutions and
collaborating on these issues with public authorities and other organisations such as social
economy entities and unions. The world of labour is in a state of emergency; we need to roll up
our sleeves and cooperate to prevent things getting even worse.

Acknowledgements
This contribution is based on Sandrino Graceffa’s book, Refaire le monde . . . Du travail.
Une alternative à l’ube´risation de l’e´conomie, Les Éditions Repas, Valence, 2016.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.

Sandrino Graceffa and Sarah de Heusch

SMart
Email: ris@smartbe.be
www.smartbe.be