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The Future of Social Protection

What Works for Non-standard Workers?

image of The Future of Social Protection

Social protection systems are often still designed for the archetypical full-time dependent employee. Work patterns deviating from this model – be it self-employment or online "gig work" – can lead to gaps in social protection coverage. Globalisation and digitalisation are likely to exacerbate this discrepancy as new technologies make it easier and cheaper to offer and find work online, and online work platforms have experienced spectacular growth in recent years. While new technologies and the new forms of work they create bring the incomplete social protection of non-standard workers to the forefront of the international policy debate, non-standard work and policies to address such workers’ situation are not new: across the OECD on average, one in six workers is self-employed, and a further one in eight employees is on a temporary contract. Thus, there are lessons to be learned from country experiences of providing social protection to non-standard workers. This report presents seven policy examples from OECD countries, including the "artists’ insurance system" in Germany or voluntary unemployment insurance for self-employed workers in Sweden. It draws on these studies to suggest policy options for providing social protection for non-standard workers, and for increasing the income security of on-call workers and those on flexible hours contracts.

English

France: Social protection for the self-employed

This chapter discusses the ongoing efforts to integrate the social protection of self-employed workers into the general social protection system in France. Several autonomous schemes and a complex system of contribution rates and entitlements obscure the relationship between gross and net wages and hinder the mobility of workers across jobs and occupations. While there have been efforts to harmonise the social protection of self-employed workers and employees, differences in coverage and contribution rates remain. The social protection of employees and self-employed workers is also managed by diverse institutions which are imperfectly coordinated. This paper describes the contribution rates and the social protection of various forms of employment in France. It provides information about the different components of the social protection of self-employed people (the organisation of schemes and their financial architecture, membership of the schemes, contributions and benefits) and compares the situation of different kinds of self-employed workers with that of employees. The chapter also discusses a special unemployment scheme for performing artists and related occupations, the Intermittents du spectacle.

English

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