2 million self-employed
Their interests are our interest
It's your contract: Take control of it!
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Charter of Contractual Fairness.

Debate: Suck it up?

Contract problems?
Fixing business disputes
There's lots happening for new dispute resolution services for small business people. The Small Business Commissioner (SBC) model is being rolled out across Australia. Explanation of developments.
Watching: The new world of work
We track and discuss what's happening with work.
The new Cuban revolution.
Watching: The coordinated attack against self-employed in Australia
Do unions hate the self-employed?
Federal tax attack
Sham contracting small problem
Watching: New Technology
Opportunities and new threats for self-employed people
Left versus right: the great debate
Ken Phillips (ICA) and Peter Strong (COSBOA) debate "The Future (or Death) of Employment". Vids are here.
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Defend contractor tax laws
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Harmonised laws have big problems.
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We're watching

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Ken Phillips on the debt equation

Changing technology spurs self-employment

We're keeping an eye on where new technology presents opportunities in our changing world of work. But we're also watching for the threats.

30 April 2012: Is the Internet fair?

There's a global debate over whether the big Internet players manipulate the system. Regulators in the EU forced Microsoft to make changes. Now they're focused on Google. Google has a constant challenge catching scammers who try to manipulate their search systems

20 May 2011: More business transformers

Its amazing how business is changing. Watch this interview with Matt Barrie from www.freelancer.com who is connecting workers with businesses on a global basis. Businesses post jobs that workers bid for. Payment occurs online when jobs are finished. It's mainly small business people doing work for small business people. But it brings the power of 'big' to the little businessperson's business.

4 April 2011: Watch the threats

The head of COSBOA asks if monopoly internet providers could manipulate the online world to harm competition---particularly small business people. Here's one way they could do this.

20 March 2011: Changing technology spurs self-employment

New technology is about to connect the customer with the front-line service provider like we've never seen before. Facebook, Twitter, eBay and Amazon have only been the beginning. For example, watch the impact of Zaarly and Uber directly on your life soon! The opportunities if you're self-employed are set to explode. Will this next wave of technological connectivity turn employment into a dinosaur?
  • This article explains a good deal about Uber and Zaarly.
  • This video also explains Uber. It's only in San Francisco at the moment, but watch it go global!
  • Regulators are flipping out.
  • Zaarly could do for services what eBay has done for retailing. We've seen the retail revolution---now watch the services (labour-only) revolution.

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Submitted Comments

On 19 March 2011, Dick Davies commented:

 Very good message about rate of change of work. I am amazed by the contrast between the incredible rate of change on the ground and the sluggish, acrimonious, rear-view-vision nature of much of the political debate. I sometimes think the biggest threat to Australia's economy are its employment and industrial relations industries. There are three things that should be happening, it seems to me, but if they are, I don't see them:

1. Practical formal courses in working independently. I picture that you start up a business not knowing much about what you are doing and a few years later you've had the benefit of a lot of help, you have a successful business and you also have a degree. There was an excellent article in the Business Spectator a couple of weeks ago about the MBA programme at IMD headed in a similar direction.

Is Monash trying to offer anything for independents?

2. Independents having a forum to just talk to each other. Independents share values and a view on life whose significance goes far beyond the particular thing they happen to do, and it is these values and views that can produce a political force. Things like the Small Business Forum in Sydney are too busy and too sales/marketing oriented to fulfill the function I have in mind.

3. Are any unions looking 2M independents, and attempting to attract them by offering services at highly competitive rates? Here's a shot from a long bow: unions eventually become the organisers with the contacts, enabling large groups of independents to self-organise; roll this on a while and they put a commercial proposition to the government to take over large chunks of the health service, with the work organised and executed by self employed independents.