DOING KNOWLEDGE WORK IN AN INFORMATION ECONOMY

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Nicole S. CohenUniversity of TorontoNovember 29, 2012

FREELANCERS’ EARNINGS

Average $24,000 in 2005 Professional Writers Association of Canada. Canadian Professional Writers Survey: A Profile of

the Freelance Writing Sector in Canada, 2006

Survey: 45% earned under $20,000 in 2009

75% say freelance writing is their main job

PRECARITY

“Intermittent employment and radical uncertainty about the future” Andrew Ross Nice Work If You can Get It: Life and Labor in Precarious Times, 2009

“Financial and existential insecurity arising from the flexibilization of labour” Enda Brophy and Greig de Peuter, “Immaterial Labour, Precarity, and Recomposition,” 2007

“The insecurity, discontinuity and randomness that now hangs over all work” Andre Gorz, The Immaterial, 2012

“the terror of not having reliable work or reliable income”

“The pay often does not reflect the work you put into a piece.

You are expected to come up with ideas, research and pitch without pay, yet are not

adequately compensated when your story ideas are accepted.”

“...If travel opportunities come up, I don’t have to skip them

the way I would if I had a desk job, but… I will most likely be spending those ‘vacation’ days

glued to my laptop.”

SAMPLE CONTRACT

Transcontinental contract, badwritingcontracts.wordpress.com

“No one cares where I am, just as long as I get the work done.”

“I can’t spend a month searching through archives,

filing Freedom of Information requests, reading research

and trying to get to know the people in a story when I’m only being paid for one or two days of

work.”

“In order to pump out stories for twenty to forty cents

a word, I can’t do any real background investigative

work—just dribble if I’m going to make a living.”

Thank you!

nscohen@gmail.com

@nicole_s_cohen

culturalworkersorganize.org