2023-04-28 10:15:00
In the absence of a specific regulatory and legal framework, freelance work is considered as informal work in Tunisia. Freelancers therefore face social stigma and are deprived of the right to access social protection. These are young people who evolve, professionally, in vulnerability, even precariousness.
They are 120,000 freelancers in the creative field to have preferred independent work to salaried work. Being a community that continues to grow as technological development accelerates, the creative professions practiced in freelance are very numerous.
Designer, videographer, developer, communicator, gamer, painter… the list of independent creatives is growing day by day to include new emerging professions. But faced with this overflow of creativity, the multitude of opportunities created in these fields as well as the possibility of opening up to the outside world thanks to digital technology, young freelancers often come up once morest the rigidity and complexity administrative and observe a total misunderstanding of this new way of working by the State services.
Freelancing is informal in Tunisia
In the absence of a specific regulatory and legal framework, freelance work is considered as informal work in Tunisia. Freelancers therefore face social stigma and are deprived of the right to access social protection. These are young people who evolve, professionally, in vulnerability or even precariousness. However, in other countries, freelance work benefits from legal regimes and continues to gain ground: in the United States, the self-employed represent 34% of their work force while they constitute 12% of the active population. In France.
What possible statuses for freelance workers in Tunisia? What difficulties do they often encounter? How to value the invisible work of young creatives? With a view to addressing all these questions relating to independent work in the creative field, the Tunisian network of freelancers “Prod’it”, “Ticdce” and “Peej” organized, in collaboration with Islab (University of Jendouba) and a consortium of student clubs and associations, the 3e edition of the “Tunisian Freelance Day”, which was held on Wednesday April 26 at the Cité de la culture in Tunis. The event, which brought together young creative people from all walks of life, was punctuated by informal debates and panels dealing with the challenges of freelance in Tunisia and was enriched by testimonials and “success stories”.
Promoting creative professions
The message conveyed by these young people was clear: they aspire to recognition and promotion of their professions. “We are not asking for help, we are not asking for recruitment, what we want is for them to stop putting a spoke in our wheels,” said Ahmed Hermassi, president of “Prod’it”. following the screening of a video that retraces the obstacle course that a young freelancer endures to formalize his work.
Affirming that the freelance is not a status but an economic model and a qualification, the speaker explained that the creative trades do not fit with the tax system of the Patente. In addition, independent creatives face several challenges that prevent their professional development, such as the lack of specific legal status, infringement of copyright, but also difficulties in accessing markets and benefiting from social protection. “We can’t talk regarding a creative economy in Tunisia when copyrights are constantly violated,” he points out. For freelance workers, the auto-entrepreneur regime as well as the status of artist can constitute a solution adapted to the requirements of creative professions, since being precarious, a “freelancer”, who is in his infancy, cannot not bear the costs of creating a patent.
However, this community quickly experienced disappointment, following the publication of the 2023 Finance Law, which excludes an entire section of the creative professions from the auto-entrepreneur regime. According to several administrative officials, improving the nomenclature of activities and creating new sub-categories can be a possible solution to formalize freelancers in the creative field. A line of thought that was considered timid because “freelancers” are often multidisciplinary and may not correspond to a well-defined category.
For the organizers, the day was an opportunity to make the voices of these shadow workers heard, and the initiative will not stop there. Today, freelance workers want to create a cooperative structure in order to self-organize and become a source of proposals.
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