The decision makers – stop ignoring the independent public! | opinion

I'll start with curiosity. When I asked my father with great interest (being a young son of an employed family) who owned the luxury car that was parked on the street where I grew up in Holon in the 1980s – I replied that "to the independent neighbor. Your father is an employee, and the self-employed have a large income." Since then, the creations have been reversed, and today it is precisely the salaried employee who has the ability to own such a vehicle, while a large part of the self-employed are dragged somewhere in a survival routine in the back.

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As the president of the Chamber of Independent Organizations, I shout this above all else – the independent public is the battered and battered public in the State of Israel, the "milking cow", the one that pays for every possible public institution, and sees nothing when it is needed in return. This is not a catchphrase or a slogan – but the reality of Asura. And it's important to understand – self-employed people are entrepreneurs at heart, a productive public, one that sits on the edge and demands to get up in the morning and go out to make a living.

In a country saturated with upheavals like ours, the self-employed public and business owners have been dealt severe blows in recent years one after the other – a long period of closures under Corona, countless military operations and now long months under war. Even when the economy based on the producers in it, with real flexibility, quickly returns to activity, tens of thousands of self-employed people who are desperate for work and a living are left behind – self-employed people from the south and north, self-employed people from foreign and domestic tourism branches, productions and construction, self-employed people and self-employed reserve servants who are at the front, self-employed people and independent people whose spouses are at the front and more . All the self-employed in Israel, and these in particular now, are faced with the lack of a social safety net for a short time, one that in Israel only comes to the salaried employee.

So much for the introduction. Surprisingly, despite the difficulties and perhaps even because of them, the economic reality is actually calling for an opposite trend that cannot be stopped or ignored, which is happening in the countries of the world, and even more so in the State of Israel. Recent demographic data published recently show an unprecedented increase in the number of applicants to open a business (in the format of an exempt dealer) over the past few years, and today their number is estimated at 422 thousand exempt dealers as of the end of 2023. This is a sharp increase of 45% since 2019. This figure Indicates an unreasonable increase in the number of small businesses (including freelancers) who choose to open an exempt business case and join the circle of independents whose annual turnover does not exceed NIS 120,000.

It is important to emphasize that the increase in the number of exempt dealers is due to many renters whose desire for independence and additional income and the combination with the Israeli cost of living , leads them to explore the independent side and open an exempt dealer file (on my side, of course), which is considered the "conditions of entry" to the world of economic independence, to the world of the independent. This additional income, which becomes independent, has become even stronger in recent years following digitization processes and in general – the "gig economy", which leads to the easy sale of services online.

Another statistic is that the number of licensed dealers has also increased in recent years, albeit at a lower rate than the exempt dealer. At the end of 2023, the estimated figure is 673,183 authorized dealers, while in 2020 the total number of authorized dealers was estimated at 414 thousand. These data indicate a "new" path that is being paved in the world of work and leads many people to take part in the processes of the cooperative and independent economy. An increase of tens of percent in a few years proves that there is a need, more than ever, for an appropriate policy for the self-employed population, especially in light of the upheavals they experienced during the Corona period and continue to experience now during the war.

The labor market in Israel for the past few years has placed in front of the decision makers a bright red warning sign in the form of the accelerating trend. And even if, unfortunately, there are those who are now careful to close their eyes and ignore what has been said – but with the strengthening of the global trend and the one that is happening in Israel in particular, there will be no escape from treating the public that very soon will number about half of the manpower working in Israel, who cannot be left behind in extreme cases such as war, plague and even an earthquake Abandoned to his fate – without a social safety net and without any response. In this regard, it is important to emphasize the urgent need to enact a push-button procedure law to assist the self-employed public in crisis situations, which unfortunately is not happening even these days when a war in the north is hanging in the air.

The time has come (it's been a long time) to stop a culture of evasion, turning a blind eye and a clenched hand, and to look proudly into the eyes of hundreds of thousands of self-employed men and women and tens of thousands of new entrants into the self-employment circle every year, who set out to generate income despite day-to-day difficulties. These tell the story of the growth of the State of Israel, and deserve to receive a social safety net (unemployment benefits, days of serious illness, response to extreme situations, etc.) just as equal and fair as the one provided by law to the public of salaried workers.

The writer is the president of Lahav, the Chamber of Independent and Business Organizations in Israel. The article is based on demographic data analyzed by Dr. Robi Nathanzon, the economic consultant of the Lahav organization