Beyond the Model Worker: Surveying a Creative Precariat

摘要: The figure of the self-reliant, risk-bearing, non-unionised, self-exploiting, always-on flexibly employed worker in creative industries has been positioned as a role model contemporary capitalism. Although notion model-worker is compelling critical diagnostic self-management precarity post-Fordist times, I argue that it provides an insufficient perspective on labour and so-called economy to extent occludes capacity contest among workforces represents. Informed by larger research project, this article thematises salient features select collective responses are emerging from workers nonstandard employment arts, media, cultural industries. discussion structured three main parts: first, ag-gregation, identifies initiatives which status – rather than specific profession or sector basis assembly advocacy; second, compensation, highlights unpaid work growing point contention across sectors; third, occupation, describes cases precarious voicing their grievances engaging direct action context wider social movements. These dimensions response precarisation at risk being overlooked if optic workers’ strategies focused upon single particular profession. In conclusion, emphasise organisations, campaigns, proposals surveyed marked tensions between accommodative adaption, incremental improvements, radical reformism vis-a-vis precarity.