What does it mean to unionize when you’re your own boss?

Hey there, and welcome
to the new Eye on Design newsletter.

Each Thursday we take a closer look at our main story of the week and highlight a few things that make it an exciting read.

This week, we look at a group of designers in the UK who are unionizing in order to be paid on time, paid for overtime, paid for invisible labor, and more.

One of the most surprising things we found?
They’re not modeling themselves after other
labor unions, but after the gig economy.

What Does it Mean to Unionize When You’re Your Own Boss?

This month, around 20 designers, artists, and other creatives gathered for the first meeting of the United Voices of the World (UVW) Design & Cultural Workers Union. UVW was founded in 2014 as a grassroots trade union representing workers such as migrant cleaners, legal workers, sex workers, and as of recently, graphic designers.

The new Design & Cultural Workers branch, started by design collective Evening Class, aims to “unify disparate, atomized, and increasingly precarious workers in what is termed ‘the cultural sector.’”

“Design has a rich history of trade unions, but labor conditions have changed: should we look to the gig economy for a way forward?”

Evening Class got serious about starting a union in 2018, but their conversations with designers about unhealthy work practices started several years prior. After some heavy research into the historical precedents for a designers union, the collective joined an existing union where much of the infrastructure for unionizing was already in place.

It chose UVW, in part, because of the recent gains made by it and other grassroots unions representing “precarious workers,” a term defined by the International Labor Rights Forum as workers who “fill permanent job needs, but are denied permanent employee rights.”

“We found that gig economy workers have a lot of natural overlap with designers.”

You might have heard the term “precarious workers” used interchangeably with “gig workers,” and applied to couriers, ride-share drivers, and food delivery people working for companies like Uber, Lyft, Doordash, and Deliveroo. These independent contractors help make up the new gig economy, in which freelance work and short-term contracts, rather than permanent employment, is the norm.

Gig workers have begun forming their own unions to take on the problems specific to this new economy, and they’ve been making big gains (see recent employment right cases won by Deliveroo riders and Hermes couriers). Evening Class has taken note—and thinks that designers should follow suit.

We talked to members of Evening Class who helped form the UVW Design & Cultural Workers union about the most common grievances they’ve heard from designers, and what a union can do about it. After its first meeting, the group sent us the list of demands its members had come up with:

We demand to be paid on time.

We demand to be paid overtime and for invisible labor.

We demand to leave work on time and to not be expected to do work outside of work hours.

We demand that our employers obey the law.

Even small businesses are accountable for our health, safety, and wellbeing.

We demand an end to unpaid internships, unpaid pitching, and unpaid ‘opportunities’ / unadvertised jobs.

We demand fair pay and pensions.

Read our article about how the union got started
and what it’s doing next—plus resources
for anyone who’s ever thought about
starting or joining a union.

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