Peek beneath the spectacle of New York Metropolis’s artistic business — the viral movies and graphic designs, splashy advert campaigns and photoshoots, movies and vogue reveals — and also you’ll discover a fixed: freelancers.
New York Metropolis is house to over 1 million freelancers, greater than a 3rd of our workforce. They’re stylists, writers, photographers, designers, fashions, videographers, and animators. They’re the self-starting creatives hustling throughout each borough, typically powering essentially the most influential manufacturers in essentially the most influential metropolis on the earth.
As commissioners of two Mamdani administration companies working intently with the artistic business, we wish to ship a transparent message to companies: if you happen to revenue from artistic labor in New York Metropolis, you should abide by the legislation. And to New York Metropolis freelancers: you may have a proper to be paid on time in your work, and the Division of Shopper and Employee Safety and Mayor’s Workplace of Media and Leisure are right here to battle for that proper.
New York Metropolis has a number of the strongest freelance employee protections within the nation. In 2017, the New York Metropolis Council handed the Freelance Isn’t Free Act, which requires corporations to offer freelancers with written contracts, well timed funds, and redress for damages. Since then, different states and municipalities, like Los Angeles, have adopted our lead.
Implementing the Freelance Isn’t Free Act isn’t simply good coverage – it’s making an actual distinction in folks’s lives. Think about Splashlight, a artistic content material manufacturing company whose shoppers have included a number of the world’s most recognizable manufacturers, together with Amazon, Nike, and Goal. After over two dozen freelancers reported continual late funds final yr to DCWP, the town launched an investigation into the corporate’s practices. We uncovered a enterprise mannequin that handled freelancers as expendable and cost timelines as mere ideas — textbook violations of the legislation.
Splashlight, we discovered, fulfilled lower than twenty p.c of its contracts on time. Lots of of freelancers had been paid late — or under no circumstances. That’s why DCWP lately secured a $528,817 settlement with the corporate to compensate employees. This settlement will totally compensate New York Metropolis freelancers who weren’t paid initially and can present extra compensation to freelancers who had been paid late.
Freelancers generate over $1 trillion yearly to the U.S. financial system. But, for all the advantages that freelance work brings, what occurred at Splashlight was not an anomaly: three-quarters of freelancers nationwide report not being paid on time. It’s the unlucky results of an opaque system that, beneath the guise of employee flexibility and autonomy, has concentrated financial energy on the high whereas diffusing accountability for employees on the backside.
More and more, main companies have discovered new methods to skirt labor protections, subcontracting artistic work by layers of intermediaries—administration companies, platforms, and third-party distributors. In apply, this creates a vacuum of accountability for the protection and rights of employees. When freelancers develop into depending on nebulous contracts and arbitrary cost phrases, the most important companies evade accountability whereas employees are left frolicked to dry.
The Metropolis’s investigation into Splashlight laid this actuality naked, however the way forward for work isn’t predestined to be this manner. Not whereas we’re in cost, and never with the Freelance Isn’t Free Act because the legislation of the land. Underneath Mayor Mamdani, New York Metropolis is dedicated to making sure that corporations like Splashlight can’t rip off hardworking freelancers.
That begins with clear requirements. Freelancers deserve certainty round cost timelines, mental property, dispute decision, and elementary office protections.
It additionally requires sturdy enforcement. There are penalties for companies that subvert the Freelance Isn’t Free Act. On this administration, there will probably be penalties for lack of compliance with the legislation, simply as with Splashlight.
As we’re inundated with AI-slop content material, this second requires actual, substantive funding in artistic careers and abilities. Freelancers thrive once they can entry coaching, alternatives, and networks that hold tempo with evolving industries. Supporting artistic employees means supporting the very material of New York Metropolis, the very promise of what it means to make it right here.
Some have argued that the Freelance Isn’t Free Act stifles enterprise. That’s false. A good, clear labor market builds belief—and belief fuels development. Companies that worth artistic labor ought to welcome clear, enforceable guidelines that reward moral, constant conduct. New York, in spite of everything, has at all times been a metropolis constructed by impartial thinkers and inventive risk-takers. The query isn’t whether or not freelancers deserve safety, however whether or not a metropolis that prospers on their labor can afford to not shield them. The reply is evident as day to us.
Once you see a luxurious billboard towering over midtown Manhattan, your favourite new tv collection shot in Brooklyn, or a worldwide model marketing campaign born out of a NYC manufacturing studio, we would like you to know this: freelancers had been there. It’s our job to ensure they’re paid, protected, and handled with dignity. On this new period of employee justice, we’ll.
Rafael Espinal is commissioner of the New York Metropolis Mayor’s Workplace of Media and Leisure and former govt director of the Freelancers’ Union.
Sam Levine is commissioner of the New York Metropolis Division of Shopper and Employee Safety.
