As Brenda mentioned Freelancer Union last week, I did some research and got the chance to chat with Mr. Rafael L Espinal Jr, President of Freelancers Union. I learned what they are working on and where is the opportunity areas for my thesis.
Freelancers Union is founded by Sara Horowitz, an American lawyer, and non-profit executive in 1995. This platform helps freelancers to build social network safely, offers insurance benefits, and talk to the government to advocate policy change. Any freelancer can join the community for free. They can support the organization by direct donation or purchasing insurance products on the platform.
Freelancer Union touched upon many pain points: It’s hard for freelancers to have a secure life: They curate health insurance products for self-employed workers. Freelancers do not have a community. They are lone wolves. The union organizes monthly meetups for freelancers to come together, learn stuff, and build a local community. Freelancers have a hard time to discuss rates with clients. The union also assists with many legal issues, like copyright issues.
According to Rafael, most freelancers are working in the creative field, others are lawyers and drivers. Currently, the union is working on organizing job opportunities and improve freelancers’ wellness under this pandemic.
While talking to Rafael, I figured there are opportunities for me to explore:
- Help freelancers set the rate. There is an open-sourced database of rates and other information out there, but it’s not organized.
- Filter the clients for freelancers. Some clients just want to lower the rates, which ends up creating an unhealthy job market. How to prevent freelancers from being victims of exploitation?
- In general, how to make the job market become healthier?
Next up, I will talk to some full-time freelancers to hear about their journey: How they end up being full-time freelancers? How they deal with all the “annoying problems”: taxes, setting rates, and finding clients.
