Yvon Jadoul as Part of Who Owns the World? PCC Conference at The New School 2019

Summary

Yvon Jadoul at Who Owns the World Conference, convened by the Platform Cooperativism Consortium at The New School in November 2019. Jadoul is a guest speaker for the “Gig Worker, Freelancer, Self-Employed: Who Is Watching out for Them?” discussion panel.

How can the worker co-op form help workers in the informal economy, marked by deregulated tech firms and a decline of unions, both in the overdeveloped world as well as in the economically developing world? Where and how does technology play a role in answering this question?

Yvon Jadoul is the General Secretary of the European Smart Cooperative. After a career of nearly 10 years in ministerial offices in Belgium as a public policy advisor in various fields (employment, economy, and housing), he joined Smart in 2018 as political advisor to the CEO, Sandrino Graceffa. His role has quickly evolved and today he manages a team that implements functions related to political lobbying, communication, international development and the animation of the company’s cooperative life. Smart is a European cooperative of self-employed workers (who can also be called ‘freelancers’) from all backgrounds and offers a set of shared services (legal, financial, administrative, training, economic support, shared workspaces), enabling them to develop their professional activities in complete autonomy. The status of entrepreneur-employee within the Smart shared structure makes it possible to reconcile social protection with a true entrepreneurial dynamic.