I just joined the Freelancer’s Union. This is a non-traditional union — it’s not focused on a single industry, instead of dues it charges fees for services. Yet as a union, it gets directly involved with the political process to fight for rights of workers. So, for example, about 30% of the U.S. workforce can currently be classified as freelance workers, yet our health insurance system is designed so that employers provide health insurance only to workers who are permanent employees. Freelancers (all the way from day laborers to high-priced consultants) may find themselves either unable to get health insurance, or forced to pay far more per individual than big employers do.<\/p>\n
I joined the Freelancer’s Union because in many ways clergypeople function as freelancers. Yes, I’m a full-time permanent employee right now, and yes I’m lucky enough to work for a congregation that provides me with adequate health care — but lots of Unitarian Universalist ministers (and clergy of all faith traditions) are not so lucky. In my case, I do belong to a professional association, the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association (UUMA), but frankly the UUMA useless when it comes to helping me with things like health insurance, and advocating for me in the political arena. Indeed, the only reason I belong to the UUMA is that I am required to do so to stay in fellowship with the Unitarian Universalist Association — other than that, the UUMA is a useless drag on my professional expenses.<\/p>\n
So I’m putting the word out to other clergypeople I know — think about joining the Freelancer’s Union. It’s a national membership organization for independent workers, and we think independent workers should ahve the same rights as traditional workers. We’re a big political constituency, and we can organize around issues, and make politicians listen. It’s all about working together to make all of our lives more secure. Check it out, and see what you think<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I just joined the Freelancer’s Union. This is a non-traditional union — it’s not focused on a single industry, instead of dues it charges fees for services. Yet as a union, it gets directly involved with the political process to fight for rights of workers. So, for example, about 30% of the U.S. workforce can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[309],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5281"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5286,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5281\/revisions\/5286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}