{"id":944,"date":"2016-03-28T05:00:32","date_gmt":"2016-03-28T05:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hunterword.com\/?p=944"},"modified":"2017-03-15T09:32:15","modified_gmt":"2017-03-15T13:32:15","slug":"caveat-lector-ye-rip-off-artists-of-new-york-city-freelancers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hunterword.com\/index.php\/caveat-lector-ye-rip-off-artists-of-new-york-city-freelancers\/","title":{"rendered":"Caveat Lector Ye Rip-Off Artists of NY Freelancers"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Senior Editor Jimmy Kelly, March 26, 2016<\/strong><\/p>\n

Deborah Cowell, a veteran book editor and freelance writer of more than\u00a010\u00a0years, negotiated\u00a0a $500 agreement with a client to do editorial work. \u00a0When the project was complete, however, the client altered Cowell\u2019s work, claimed all of her intellectual property as its own and refused\u00a0to pay the agreed upon $500. \u00a0After three months of vigorous pursuit, Cowell was\u00a0eventually given\u00a0$60 in cash and was told \u201ctake it or leave it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cowell never received the balance of $440, she said in her appearance before\u00a0a New York City Council committee\u00a0holding a\u00a0public hearing on a\u00a0pending bill known as the Freelance Isn’t Free Act.<\/a>\u00a0If the bill becomes law, the legislation can help protect freelancers from being ripped off, Cowell told the committee.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cFreelance Isn\u2019t Free Act.\u201d<\/a><\/h3>\n

\"pub-freelancers\"<\/p>\n

Lucy Reading-Ikkanda, a freelance designer and illustrator for 12 years, also told the committee about her costly\u00a0experience. Hired by a client to work for a magazine, she was covering for an employee who was on extended maternity leave. Reading-Ikkanda signed a contract with for a 30-day payment cycle. However, after submitting her first invoice, the accounts department of the magazine informed her that the company had a 75-day payment cycle.Reading-Ikkanda waited the allotted 75 days, but still did not receive payment.<\/p>\n

After the\u00a0maternity leave arrangement\u00a0was complete, Reading-Ikkanda still had not receive any payment. The total of her submitted invoices had reached $17,500. In the meantime, Reading-Ikkanda had to pay rent, taxes, and health insurance. She spent many hours sending\u00a0emails and\u00a0phoning\u00a0the company. Reading-Ikkanda eventually received a\u00a0paycheck after six months, but the \u201cFreelance Isn\u2019t Free Act,\u201d if passed, can help freelancers be paid more timely, she said at the City Hall meeting.<\/p>\n

Jon Harper, a freelancer in the theater industry for nine years, made an agreement with a puppet company to help produce their show and have it ready for opening night. Harper spent \u201cevery bit of free time\u201d he had with them until the show was ready about a week later, he said at the public hearing. He invoiced the company for his time and that\u00a0came out to \u201ca little over a thousand dollars,\u201d he said. The show Harper helped to produce ran for over a month, yet, he never received a check.<\/p>\n

Performers in the play had only been paid half their balance, and even some of those checks had bounced. After four months of waiting, and several broken promises of the check is in the mail,<\/em>\u00a0Harper was still waiting at the time of his appearance before the committee.<\/p>\n

There are nearly 54 million freelance workers in the United States\u00a0and many face similar issues of nonpayment and late payment that Cowell, Reading-Ikkanda, and Harper experienced, according to,\u00a0The Costs of Nonpayment: a study of nonpayment and late payments in the freelance workforce,<\/a>\u00a0representatives of\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0the National Employment Law Project.<\/p>\n

New York City has 1.3 million freelance workers, according to the Freelancers Union, and, according to its estimates, \u201cMore than seventy percent of freelancers experience late or nonpayment at some point in their career, getting stiffed an average of $5,968 every year.\u201d While employees of companies are protected against wage theft by the State Department of Labor, freelance workers can only sue or walk away. \u201cIncreasingly, that\u2019s a gamble companies with lawyers and resources at their disposal are willing to make,\u201d according to the NELP report.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Surviving in New York Can Be “Nearly Impossible” for Freelancers<\/strong><\/h3>\n

A committee of the City Council held the\u00a0public hearing Monday, February 29, on the \u201cFreelance Isn\u2019t Free Act.\u201d According to The Committee on Consumer Affairs\u2019 Report of The Governmental Affairs Division, the bill will be \u201ca local law designed to amend the New York City Charter and the Administrative Code, in relation to establishing protections for freelance workers.\u201d If passed, it would be the first law in the country to protect freelance workers.<\/p>\n

Freelance workers make up one-third of the workforce in the United States. A survey of 5,358 freelance workers across the country, carried out by the Freelancers Union in July 2015, reported that half of the workers faced difficulty collecting payment for their work in 2014. Seventy-one percent had trouble with receiving payment at some point in their careers.<\/p>\n

While eighty one percent of these workers said that there were times when they were paid late, thirty four percent said they were not paid at all. One question in the survey asked for the longest time a freelance worker had to wait for payment. The average answer was 98 days or over three months.<\/p>\n

The city legislation could protect freelancers from nonpayment and late payment by requiring most freelance work \u201cvalued at over $200\u201d to be done under a written contract that details key terms and a payment deadline. Contracts must stipulate that the clients pay as agreed to in the contract in no later than 30 days after the contract deadline. As a result \u201cany violation of these provisions would give rise to private cause of action in which the prevailing freelancers would collect double damages and attorney\u2019s fees,\u201d according to the bill.<\/p>\n

In addition, the bill would create a procedure for the Department of Consumer Affairs to assess civil penalties for a client.\u00a0Sara Horowitz, founder and executive director of the Freelancers Union, said in her testimony that freelance workers are \u201ctruly the backbone of New York City\u2019s economy.\u201d Yet, Horowitz also said, \u201cToo many freelancers aren\u2019t getting paid for the work that they do.\u201d She cited a statistic that the average unpaid freelancer loses nearly $6,000 a year.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor our members,\u201d said Horowitz,\u201d this represents about 13\u00a0percent of their annual income.\u201d\u00a0Due to the income instability caused by late or nonpayment, many freelancers face difficulty paying rent, health insurance, and tax payments. \u201cBut loss of income doesn\u2019t just stop there,\u201d Horowitz said, \u201cit stifles business growth, incurs debt, and makes surviving in New York City nearly impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Horowitz listed the benefits and effects of the Freelance Isn\u2019t Free bill. By mandating written contracts, she said, the bill will help both freelancers and clients set clear expectations from the beginning and mitigate possibility of conflicts. The bill will also establish 30-day payment terms so that workers are paid on time. Finally, the bill will formalize and increase penalties for nonpayment which will ultimately, according to Horowitz, \u201cdissuade unethical business practices.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"pubfreelancers\"<\/p>\n

The bill is designed to protect freelance workers like Latefa Harmon, a professional development consultant, from breach of contract with big businesses that\u00a0either pay months late or do not pay at all. Harmon told the committee that since she began working as a freelancer in 2008, she \u201cconsistently had a variety of different issues with nonpayment.\u201d Harmon gave a specific example of one deadbeat business, which she could not name because of her\u00a0contract. Harmon said that in 2015 this client hired her \u201cfor a package of training and development services to improve their business performance.\u201d<\/p>\n

In order to secure the job, she said, she \u201coffered them a discount flat-rate of $10,000.\u201d After signing a written contract, the client paid a stipulated retainer and deposit of $2,700 upfront and then later paid a subsequent installment of $2,300 \u201cjust before the completion of the project,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

However, Harmon said, even though her work was always approved, the client \u201crefused to pay the balance of $5,000 at the end of the project\u2014after three months of work completed.\u201d She tried several times to collect the balance but was rebuffed. Nonetheless, she said, the client had \u201cimplemented my strategy and their business is profiting from my work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harmon said that she only pursued projects \u201cwith large companies and agencies who can easily afford to pay their contractors.\u201d However, even these larger corporations \u201ccan sometimes take up to 6 months to produce a check.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harmon said that companies would make hard deals with freelancers because they know that freelancers do not have any legal protection. At the time of Harmon\u2019s testimony, she said the penalties for not paying a freelancer \u201conly lie within the realm of an actual lawsuit.\u201d However, many freelancers often do not pursue this option because, Harmon said, \u201cif we aren\u2019t getting paid, and can barely pay our own bills, how can we afford to take someone to court?\u201d<\/p>\n

Harmon said that freelance workers are becoming common in a modernized workforce and that freelancers provide one-of-a-kind services to \u201ccompanies of all sizes.\u201d If city council were to pass the Freelance isn\u2019t Free Act, Harmon said, the bill \u201cwill allow us the needed protections for our work.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Christopher Maue’s Account of Surviving In New York City\u00a0 <\/strong><\/h3>\n

Christopher Maue, a video editor and motion graphics animator, also shared a\u00a0story of nonpayment from a client. Maue moved to New York City in 2011 because, he said, \u201cthis is the center\u201d of his industry. However, since he moved here, \u201cEvery year I\u2019ve had to face a non-payment of some significant amount of money,\u201d he said. Maue said that he began this year with \u201cover $10,000 worth of outstanding payments\u201d from two clients. He was finally able to receive a payment of $8,000 from one only after \u201crepeatedly refusing to complete further work until payment was made.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maue was not paid in full until three months after the end of the payment term. \u201cGoing for three months without receiving my expected payment put me in a terrible financial position,\u201d said Maue.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Freelance Isn\u2019t Free Act has the potential to enact major change for freelancers,\u201d Maue said. By mandating contracts, the law would make clients stick to their payment amounts and timelines, and \u201cclients will not be able to treat those promises as negotiable after the work has been completed.\u201d Because of the law, the common issues of late, short, or nonpayment could be reported to proper authorities and deadbeat clients could be faced with penalties.<\/p>\n

Manhattan Borough President, Gale Brewer, a Democrat, told the committee that the Freelance Isn\u2019t Free Act was a pragmatic approach to remedy the issues many independent contractors face, such as the \u201cfrequently time-consuming and costly experience of pushing unresponsive clients to fulfill their obligations to pay for services rendered.\u201d Brewer said that the legislation couldn\u2019t have been taking place at a better time because \u201can increasing percentage of Americans prefer\u201d to hire independent contractors.<\/p>\n

Brewer said that \u201csome economists expect this sector to grow by fifty percent by 2020.\u201d Her own experience with independent contractors, she said, has taught her \u201chow difficult it is for these entrepreneurs to find stability and thrive.\u201d As a City Council member, Brewer said that she supported legislation and regulations \u201cthat made possible a new kind of economy where workers can have more flexibility and creative freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also said that this economy should also have laws to \u201censure that workers are not exploited\u201d and allow freelancers to \u201cenjoy the same protections as traditional employees.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Senior Editor James Kelly can be reached at James.kelly41@myhunter.cuny.edu<\/em>
\n\"kellypubjpg\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Senior Editor Jimmy Kelly, March 26, 2016 Deborah Cowell, a veteran book editor and freelance writer of more than\u00a010\u00a0years, negotiated\u00a0a $500 agreement with a client to do editorial work. \u00a0When the project was complete, however, the client altered Cowell\u2019s…<\/p>\n

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