CCB Magazine

Magdalena Ziomek and Alicja Möltner founded SMartDe eG in Berlin six years ago, a cooperative to empower the self-employed. Their starting point is social sustainability, since the working conditions of creative professionals and other self-employed people are often precarious, with a lack of social security - especially for those who cannot be insured through the artists’ social insurance scheme (Künstlersozialkasse).
 

Text Magdalena Ziomek     andAlicja Möltner

It all started about eight years ago. Magda was working in the agitPolska project at the time, and Alicja was a freelance cultural manager and musician, and like so many creative people, we were plagued by questions like, How do I make ends meet? How do I organize my work so that I have social security? For years, the numbers have spoken for themselves: there are more than four million self-employed people in Germany, and 2.3 million of them are solo self-employed. Half of them do not pay into the state pension scheme, and only a fraction have access to unemployment benefit insurance. In addition, many struggle with paperwork, with the personal liability risk if something goes wrong, even with orders or late payments from clients. All of this affects the security of artists’ creative livelihoods.

That’s why we started the Smart cooperative in Germany six years ago. The goal was to improve social security for the self-employed. We advocate a working approach of social sustainability; according to the calculations of the Federal Ministry of Economics in the ‘Monitoring Report on the Cultural and Creative Industries 2020’, only 14 percent of creatives in Germany manage to generate an annual turnover of more than 17,500 euros as freelancers. And the corona pandemic demonstrated clearly the considerable social and economic risks to which many solo self-employed workers are exposed. This is where we come in: Anyone can join our cooperative, with annual membership shares starting at 50 euros. All active Smart members can process orders through the cooperative and be employed by the cooperative. Based on their earnings, they receive an average monthly salary from Smart. While members are still responsible for arranging orders with their customers and providing the services, Smart takes over the administrative processing of the order. We invoice the customer for the service and take care of the travel expenses, reimbursement of expenses and, under certain circumstances, even the dunning process. If orders are processed via their employment with Smart, members don’t need to register their self-employment with the tax office and that saves a lot of bureaucracy. Lastly, the cooperative pays social security contributions and income tax. For each order processed through Smart, a fee of seven percent of the net order total is paid to our cooperative. This is used to finance the services that everyone uses.

We want to improve social security for the self-employed. After all, half of all solo self-employed people do not even pay into the state pension insurance scheme

So much for the facts. But what does it look like in practice? For example, a tour manager is in charge of a tour; the order situation varies greatly - in the summer there is a lot going on during the festival season, in the winter there is rather a lull. If that tour manager is employed by Smart, her income can be used to generate a stable average monthly salary. Because when confirmed orders come in during the summer, the cooperative makes advance payments and pays out a salary in advance based on future orders.

So we're closing a gap, and that’s been long overdue. And we know all too well about the needs of cultural workers: We all come from the culture sector - we're musicians, cultural managers, creatives of all kinds. Smart started in Belgium. We've had an office in Berlin for six years now - we've just moved for the fourth time. In the beginning we were in a co-working space in Bethanien, with four people and one desk. Then we were in a garage in Mehringdamm, and since 2018 we have been based in Mehringplatz. We recently expanded our offices with space in Wilhelmstrasse - a room for the consultants, a coworking space for the cooperative members and a room for workshops. We are now part of a pan-European Smart network with offices in countries like France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Austria and Germany - with a total of over 95,000 members! In the beginning, Smart members were mainly self-employed dancers, musicians, authors and installation artists. Today, we have an influx of members from almost all professional fields of the cultural and creative industries, and especially from those who cannot be insured through the Künstlersozialkasse. These include producers, software developers, communications trainers, marketing consultants, sound engineers and many more.

We started small, we grew gradually, and that's exactly what we want for our members: Our goal is to give creative professionals the opportunity to pursue their activities while enjoying a secure and socially sustainable status - and practice shows that over time our members become more successful and generate more revenue.

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