Dear friends,

Vasilis Niaros of the P2P Lab and myself (Michel Bauwens) produced a report on commons-oriented peer production and the collaborative economy, and what it could mean for labour and unions, commissioned by the European Trade Union federation as the EU level, i.e. ETUC/ETUI

Thanks a lot for eventually tweeting and diffusing it as well:

ETUI Policy Brief 3/2017: emergence of peer production: challenges

and opportunities for labour and unions https://t.co/hNsiXoGOlb

Key points and Conclusions

Key Points:

— The emergence of peer production is not a transient phenomenon but an essential part of the evolving economy since it is based on both technological capacity and social demand. — As this emergence is accompanied by many negative social and environmental externalities, it is vital that the labour movement and trade unions demand strong regulatory safeguards.

— There are also important potential advantages, such as a greater opportunity to choose meaningful and autonomous work, as well as other ecological benefits.

— Positive responses that have been emerging include the creation of generative entrepreneurial coalitions, platform cooperatives and labour mutuals.

— This policy brief recommends approaches that support a new cohort of autonomous workers and consider them as an integral part of the existing labour and union movements.

— A productive model that combines global open design communities with distributed manufacturing should be explored as a potential framework for local re-industrialisation and the creation of a substantial amount of blue-collar jobs

Conclusions

In conclusion, both CBPP and platform capitalism have positive and negative aspects. Given the interconnectedness of their emergence with current technological capacities, we propose that the labour movement and trade unions craft a policy response that:

— strongly regulates against negative externalities that affect workers (e.g. the regulation of Uber and AirBnB);

— strongly promotes the positive aspects by making a link between the new models and those corporate entities that take into account social justice and distribution; in other words, supports generative businesses that create livelihoods around peer production and member-owned or multi-stakeholder-managed ‘platform cooperatives’;

— supports autonomous work, creates solidarity mechanisms that insert these workers into systems of social protection, and attempts to bridge the divide between the precariat and the salariat, without reducing autonomous work to a subordinate status;

— supports the convergence of cooperative models with those of the social and solidarity economy around the commons and the ‘sharing’ economy; and

— supports the creation of business incubators and the prototyping of policies that re-create local jobs with a view to promoting potential re-industrialisation through distributed manufacturing models.

Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org

P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

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