Platform BK: Deferred work means deferred money. The artist cannot buy food from that.

What we feared at the beginning of the coronasteun appears to have become reality. The generous support money for culture should also reach the small self-employed in the arts via the institutions, but that is now happening too little. Of course, there are fine examples, such as the large subsidised arts institutions in Groningen and festivals like Boulevard and Holland Festival that continue to pay self-employed people even though their commissions have fallen due to the corona crisis.

However, there are very many artists and supporting self-employed workers, especially in the fine arts corner, who have to deal with deferred commissions and therefore deferred payments.

Only half paid

Platform Visual Arts, the interest group for visual artists, has one and all selected and the picture is disconcerting. Researcher Koen Bartijn writes: 'Almost 70% of the respondents indicated that the work/client did not continue to pay or only part of the agreed fee/salary for the existing assignments (69.4%). However, 28.4% got paid in full and in the case of only 12.8%, although not the entire amount, at least more than 50% of the agreed amount was paid on. The rest of the respondents were paid nothing, or less than 50%.'

Performances of pop stars are postponed and therefore not yet paid for, tickets already bought also remain valid, but that also applies to self-employed artisans, so it becomes difficult to suddenly have to write off half of that with, say, a gross turnover of 20,000 euros 'until when it can be done again'.

And then also that partner test

Platform BK states: 'The main reason for non-payment is simply passing on work (and the payment obligation) to the future (72.9%). From the massive passing on of agreed work and eventual failure to conclude contracts, it can be concluded that little use is made of the NOW scheme to pay flexible workers anyway.'

The conclusion, therefore, is that organisations and companies that received support to continue paying staff do not, or too little, let that apply to the self-employed, who often make up a significant part of the budget. Moreover, the problem is that with all that work being passed on, even the TOZO proves too strict and clumsy to bridge the gap. Often a partner earns too much, or you end up just above the lower limit with the one assignment that did go through. Platform BK reports that the number of self-employed art workers who can rely on the TOZO has dropped from 66 per cent in the first scheme to 22 per cent in the third and final tranche. And this is therefore not because they are so rich, but because the partner's 22-hour job was just too much to claim the scheme. In almost half of the cases, this proved to be the case, according to Platform BK.

Basic Income

As a solution, Platform BK proposes a generic benefit of 10,000 euros per self-employed person. That smacks of a universal basic income, and as long as liberal Holland still thinks that is a leftist idea, it is not going to happen. Despite the success stories. 

So what can Holland do to prevent that, the moment we all want to make up for all the missed fun of the past 14 months, there is no one left to decorate, or be at the controls? Let's make that a reader's question. You can leave your suggestion in the comments.