SMart welcomes Michel Bauwens for a 3 year research and development residency | P2P Foundation
▻https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/smart-welcomes-michel-bauwens-for-a-3-year-research-and-development-residency/2018/01/18
Readers of our blog and wiki will have noted various references to the labour mutual SMart. We find this an important movement and mutualistic solution for the autonomous workers that are becoming more and more numerous, but also ever more precarious, in our western societies. SMart membership converts income into wages, and thus into access to social protection, while also guaranteeing the payment of the invoices through a mutual guarantee fund, along with a number of other mutualized support services. Between the figure of the lone competitive entrepreneur who takes all the risks without social protections, and represents the fastest pauperized population sector in the western economy (autopreneurs in France, ZZP in Netherlands), but also as an alternative to work subordination in the classic salariat, we believe SMart represents a very fruitful third way towards collective and cooperative enterprise. Hence we believe that SMart is potentially the new form of solidarity and social power for the form that work is taking in the 21st century, while also being animated with a vision of social change. In short, I believe labour mutuals are the form of self-organization appropriate for 21st workers, which not only fights for just distribution, but also for a more just and sustainable society, in which the commons orientation plays a vital role. The leadership of SMart agrees with this vision.
Starting last November, I have accepted a consulting association with SMart and the press announcement below explains the strategic priorities of this engagement:
#Coopératives _emploi #mutuelles #P2P #Michel_Bauwens