Proceedings of 8th European Assembly on telework (Telework2001)

164Many potentials for extending services to other parts <strong>of</strong> the labour market process (which could alsosupport those who exclusively work on the web, as eLancers do) have not been exploited yet. Onlya very few freelancer/project exchanges have set out to support the whole labour market process onan Internet-based platform, including the interaction between worker and employer/client (whichin traditional employment relationships is usually dealt with by co-location). Examples includewww.smarterwork.com and www.elance.com. Here, trading partners need to agree on a cleardescription <strong>of</strong> the work product in advance. This seems to limit the applicability <strong>of</strong> integratedvirtual labour markets to niches (such as translation, website programming, design). There remainsthe possibility that trends in the labour market (towards more outsourcing and an increasein self-employment in certain segments) will benefit integrated, Internet-based labour markets.If employment contracts become ‘unbundled’, these kind <strong>of</strong> advanced exchanges might gainconsiderably in importance. Today and in the foreseeable future, however, they will be <strong>of</strong> negligiblesignificance for the overall labour market.Our case study research outlined in Section 2 has already shown that there are still powerfulbarriers that prevent labour from becoming a product that can be traded like goods on electronicmarkets. In the last part <strong>of</strong> this paper, we ask whether general trends on the labour market supportor refute the hypothesis that the properties <strong>of</strong> eLancing are becoming common-place in EU labourmarkets.4 Is eLancing Becoming a Mainstream Model for Work Organisation?The current number <strong>of</strong> self-employed freelancers who might be described as eLancers is very hardto measure for lack <strong>of</strong> a clear operationalisation. ‘Free agents’, which many regard as a preliminarystage in the development towards eLancing (Laubacher and Malone 2000), are believed to accountfor 30% <strong>of</strong> the US labour force (Kelly Services 1999), but mostly these numbers are derived at bysimply counting all those that work in atypical forms <strong>of</strong> employment. Similarly Pink (1997) addsup the self-employed, the independent contractors and temporary workers and arrives at a number<strong>of</strong> 25 million free agents, 16% <strong>of</strong> the US workforce. Is it appropriate to assume that all <strong>of</strong> theseworkers will become eLancers in the near future, acting as precursors <strong>of</strong> a general shift towardseLancing which will encompass large parts <strong>of</strong> the labour force?Evidence collected by empirica through a set <strong>of</strong> representative surveys in 1999 suggests otherwise(Gareis 2001): Although the share <strong>of</strong> teleworkers among the self-employed is considerably highercompared to the total workforce (almost 30% <strong>of</strong> all teleworkers are self-employed, against only17% <strong>of</strong> all non-teleworkers), the large majority <strong>of</strong> the self-employed still rely on traditionalcommunication media for reaching their clients and for collaborating with business contacts. Evenexcluding workers in the primary sector, the shares <strong>of</strong> workers who tele-cooperate regularly orat least occasionally are substantially lower among the self-employed then among the total workforce (see Table 2) with the exception only <strong>of</strong> Denmark and (to some extent) the Netherlands. Telecooperationwith external workers is more widespread among employees working in companiesthan among the self-employed (!), although the latter have more external contacts with clients andcustomers.2 excluding workers in primary sector