Freelancing is increasingly becoming a Croatian reality in the labor market, and the services of freelancers are in higher demand. Since the intensification of ‘working from home’, or remote work, due to new information and communication technologies and all the benefits of the digital age, as well as the consequences of the pandemic, new online business ‘tools’ have emerged for creatives and professionals of various profiles and skills. Although these are mostly freelance jobs, many talented professionals who have been laid off or have voluntarily resigned, or perhaps could not find permanent employment or simply do not function well in a corporate environment, have seen an opportunity to turn to freelancing.
Of course, to be able to work and survive in what is now a saturated and competitive freelance market in numerous professions, one must possess exceptional qualities in their work, be qualified, and sometimes work significantly more than ‘permanently employed’ individuals, so in the end, it all comes down to freelancing being a ‘full-time’ job. Some will say that freelancing is not just a way of working but a way of life, as there are professionals who simply do not see themselves in a ‘9 to 5’ work schedule, who cannot be ‘pigeonholed’ into certain work structures, systems, and norms, who cannot breathe the stale air of various companies and corporations filled with numerous office entanglements and intrigues, unproductivity, and an overall lack of ‘full-time’ efficiency and concentration, who cannot always and exclusively do only what their employer asks and demands but want to design and ultimately decide what, for whom, and on what terms they will work.
This, of course, does not mean that they do not have deadlines and that they are not exceedingly productive, but that they work in a much more relaxed and inspiring work environment. Depending on the volume of work they perform and how much they earn on a monthly and annual basis, freelancers can carry out their jobs as individuals through contracts for work and various author contracts, and as legal entities through some form of business, j.d.o.o. or d.o.o.
‘What about freelancers’?
The categorization of freelancers and freelancing, or independent professionals, and the way they perform their jobs is quite broad and comprehensive, and there are many who work under the categorization of secondary income. Not all freelancers have the opportunity to start some legal form of business, which naturally entails regulating mandatory health insurance, work experience, various types of legal protection… Therefore, many freelancers who work as individuals have the status of mandatory health insurance as unemployed persons.
After the recent announcement of the ‘cleaning’ of the health insurance database due to just one of the segments of the new ‘health reforms’, it was announced that there are currently 441,367 persons in the records of the Croatian Health Insurance Institute (HZZO) with insurance category F, i.e., unemployed, while at the same time, according to the records of the Croatian Employment Service (HZZ), there are currently 127,648 registered unemployed persons. The calculation in which the status of over 300 thousand insured persons would be questioned in the future was reached by HZZO by subtracting the number of registered unemployed persons from the total number of insured persons listed under the code for unemployed. The current legislative framework does not require an unemployed person to register with HZZ to acquire the right to health insurance, which means that legal amendments are necessary for such new laws to be applicable in practice.
In light of all the above, and regarding freelancers who earn secondary income, they cannot legally be listed in the HZZ records as unemployed persons, because if they want to do so just to retain their right to mandatory health insurance, they could very quickly be removed from the HZZ records, as according to the Labor Market Act, an unemployed person is removed from the records if they earn a monthly income that exceeds the average paid cash benefit in the previous calendar year. This year, that limit is 2,560.22 kuna per month. Even with just a penny earned above that amount, one loses the status of an unemployed person, and in the case of linking data between HZZO and HZZ, obviously also loses health insurance.
We are still struggling with the pandemic, and now with new, significantly increased living costs, and we are still collecting the shards of what is left of ‘normal life’ trying to return to some semblance of normalcy, and in all this chaos, many have lost permanent jobs and the number of freelancers is increasing. However, the state is not at all deterred from devising new ways for repression, fears, and uncertainty. And there seems to be little understanding for something constructive to be resolved. As if we are not already second-class citizens in our own country. Can the state at least be someone who supports and understands in something, or is that just a pure illusion, almost akin to Plato’s utopian debates about the ideal state? Perhaps we should refer to the famous hit by American singer Pink ‘What about us’ and rename it on this occasion to ‘What about freelancers’, because the state sees all these creative people, many of whom are unfortunately classified as unemployed, solely as surplus numbers, which even ‘damage’ the state budget or, in this case, the health system. Of course, the state takes its share from each of their author fees, but in return, it does not give much. And now it wants to take away some of the most basic civil rights, justifying that they are also ‘surplus that damages the health system’.
– HZZO has already been checking inconsistencies related to the status in mandatory health insurance, but we can say that work is already underway on further regulating the system for which amendments to the Law on Mandatory Health Insurance will be needed. For any changes related to acquiring or losing status in mandatory health insurance concerning the current regulations, amendments to the Law on Mandatory Health Insurance are necessary, which has already been initiated. Therefore, only after the change of that Law will it be possible to know more precisely about how many citizens are involved and how many citizens will have to revise their status in mandatory health insurance – they told us in the Public Relations Department of HZZO.
Although there are many freelancers in various business sectors such as copywriting, PR, graphic and web design, translation, computer programming, proofreading, multimedia, consulting, they are also dominant among journalists. And there are just as many of their problems and entanglements regarding legal status in the market. Therefore, we talked about this with Hrvoje Zovko, president of the Croatian Journalists’ Society, and Maja Sever, president of the Croatian Journalists’ Union.
– According to our data, about 300 colleagues and freelancer members are part of HND, and it is estimated that as many work, but are not in our membership. Freelancers must certainly strive harder to deliver the highest quality materials to the editorial offices and thus secure future engagements. Due to labor law insecurity, the humiliating status creates employer abuse of their rights. There are no unified data obtained by the same measurement methods, but all data show that the largest number of freelance journalists were forced into such work primarily due to moving to a new editorial office, threats of dismissal, or media shutdown – says Hrvoje Zovko, president of HND.
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A large number of freelance journalists work under contracts for work, some with multiple editorial offices, and do not earn enough income to pay full-time contributions. Or they do not pay them at all. – Sick leave, annual leave, weekends, overtime, that does not exist for freelancers and that is something that is absolutely unacceptable. This is not just an editorial problem, but primarily a problem of the organization of the legislative framework. Every change introduced in the labor-law status of journalists has gone in the direction that the gross amount paid by the employer remains the same, while all new tax and other financial burdens, all the burdens of ‘innovative’ forms of journalistic work have been imposed at the expense of media workers (e.g., the work burden, the so-called ‘5 in 1’ where the journalist is now also a photographer, proofreader, and their own producer, for the same pay as when they were just a journalist, which also harms other professions in the media sector that are not primarily journalistic in the narrow sense of the word). Ultimately, this has shifted the burden of the so-called social function of reproduction onto the worker, instead of the employer bearing it as before. This is the real consequence of the deregulation of labor relations, or the same as the erosion of labor rights.
Freelance journalists generally do not earn sufficiently high or stable income from secondary income. When the gross amount they receive covers all these obligations, the net amount proves insufficient to cover the costs of the basic consumer basket. Therefore, many freelancers save on their long-term needs to secure their daily ones. Such models function in large and wealthy media markets, but in our extremely limited market, they will never take on mass forms. While there are exceptions in every market that can work and earn this way, most freelance journalists actually earn occasional incomes that may seem high at first glance, but when their sector average is taken into account, they are still insufficient. Moreover, as soon as someone earns more than 2,560.22 kuna per month, they lose their status as an unemployed person, and if data were to be networked between institutions, the person would also lose health insurance. The point is that these freelancers’ incomes are too low for a person to acquire the right to health insurance based on them. And that is the problem we point out. Why can’t an individual who earns insecure occasional income be registered in the system as an unemployed person? The threshold that the state has set is realistically too low and needs to be changed. It cannot happen that people are left without health protection, especially due to the circumstances and conditions in which they work, not to mention the pandemic that has ravaged the economy, and thus the media scene.
