Newhouse News Service, October 23, 2006, Monday

Copyright 2006 Newhouse News Service
All Rights Reserved
Newhouse News Service

October 23, 2006 Monday 3:12 PM EDT

SECTION: FINANCIAL

HEADLINE: Freelancers Union Offers Precious Group Benefits

BYLINE: By ALISON GRANT.
Alison Grant is a reporter for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. She can be contacted at agrant@plaind.com.

BODY:
Nicolene Schwartz has built an attractive resume as a free-lance writer and filmmaker in New York City.
She wrote the exhibition catalog for a Paris art show, helped publicize the launch of an Internet service, operated the camera on a straight-to-DVD documentary, and earlier this month shot pictures on one of her bread-and-butter projects photographing high-end weddings, this one in Indonesia.
But along with the edgy assignments and the flexibility of independent work come the perils of life as a free-lancer: An inconsistent paycheck. No pension. The isolation of a solo operator. And, especially, scary health insurance costs.
Sara Horowitz, a labor attorney in Brooklyn, N.Y., has answers for entrepreneurs like the 25-year-old Schwartz.
She founded the Brooklyn-based Freelancers Union to provide group health insurance rates, and disability and life insurance policies to eligible independent workers. By year's end, it will offer access to individual 401(k) accounts.
The organization went national in August with the opening of a virtual "union hall" a Web site, www.freelancersunion.org, that has member profiles, a free-lancers' Yellow Pages and gig listings.
Horowitz said the Freelancers Union expects to be opening group health insurance plans in 20 states by the end of 2007.
Membership in the Freelancers Union and its online community is free. There are fees and eligibility requirements for the insurance and retirement services.
"These workers are the backbone for so many industries vital to our nation's economy IT, financial services, the arts, advertising and publishing," Horowitz said. "Yet these same workers are not afforded simple job protections."
Horowitz's own family was steeped in traditional organized labor. A grandfather was vice president of the venerable ladies' garment workers union in New York City. Her dad built a busy practice as a labor lawyer.
But when she graduated from Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations in 1984, the U.S. work force was much different from what her father and grandfather dealt with.
Lifetime work for a large corporation, the 1930s model that shaped American unions' role in bargaining wages and working conditions, didn't apply to the army of independent workers that emerged at the end of the 20th century.
Independents total three out of 10 workers, according to a recent government tally. Some work on their own because it pays better or is more gratifying. Others are forced into the role the "consultants" between jobs, the "permatemps" laid off before they qualify for benefits.
Horowitz, 43, worked as a union organizer and labor attorney before founding Working Today in 1995 to give solo practitioners a voice and financial clout.
Four years later, she won a $275,000 "genius" grant from the MacArthur Foundation for her market-based approach to providing insurance and retirement help through the Freelancers Union.
The "union" in the name is misleading, since the organization doesn't bargain collectively with employers. Horowitz stresses that her group is a complement to traditional unions, not a replacement.
In fact, unions and guilds such as the National Writers Union and the Graphic Artists Guild are hooking up with the Freelancers Union to offer health insurance to their members.
Independents "are a third of the work force," Horowitz said. "They really are the group that will define what the next safety net is, in very pragmatic terms."
So how do you get a swarm of lone operators to fly in formation for their common good?
To start, Horowitz built a membership of 31,000 people in New York City artists, consultants, sole proprietors and others in nonstandard work arrangements. The Freelancers Union won group health insurance rates that cost about $220 a month, one-third the average for an individual-rate HMO plan in New York. It also offered legal and financial advice and a forum where members could swap information and job postings.
The nationwide push marks "the dawn of a new form of unionism," Horowitz said, "a new kind of labor organization that seeks to protect and even the playing field for millions of independent workers and free-lancers."
Oil painter Mark DeMuro, 54, went without health insurance for years when his premium reached $5,000, with a $2,000 deductible. "You can't imagine how happy I was when I found the Freelancers Union," the Manhattan artist said.
Daniel Pink, author of the book "Free Agent Nation," said Horowitz's scheme is inspired because labor unions don't fit the new breed of unattached workers.
Still, Pink said it could be tough to rally workers who have made the decision to go it alone. And the Freelancers Union doesn't recruit at a single job site, or focus on a specific occupation.
"You have to make the case that there's a commonality of interests," Pink said.