Working for yourself

At Community we’re a proud champion of the five million strong self-employed and freelance community across the UK. For many people, self-employment is the answer to finding a good work-life balance. It can be extremely rewarding, but it can also mean longer hours, less pay, and more worry about your finances. We want to help you.

We have a range of member benefits which help to support self-employed and freelance workers, some of which you can see below. Most importantly, we want to ensure your voices are heard by building and strengthening our collective voice.

Support through COVID-19

We’ve been ensuring your voices are heard over recent years and during the coronavirus pandemic. As the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps the nation, many self-employed workers are having to choose between their health or paying their bills. We don’t believe this is right.

The government’s Self-Employed Income Support Scheme will help millions of people, but there are too many gaps in the support and people who will be left behind. We’re calling for the government to introduce additional measures of support to ensure that freelancers and the self-employed aren’t left behind. See our letter to the Chancellor here.

Waiting until June for support for your income is too long, and not good enough for those who are already struggling to make ends meet. That’s why by joining Community, you’ll become part of the collective voice for the self-employed and won’t have to pay anymore until July.

The more members we have, the stronger our voice when demanding these extra support measures. Join us today to get behind our message to government.

Knowing your rights

We’ve been helping our members to navigate difficult situations at work for many years. Advice and representation at work are the cornerstone of our service offering, and as a part of Community, you have access to all our experience and expertise. From discrimination to client relations, we’re here to help.

Immediate support

We have a package of services that you can access straight away as a Community member, including but not limited to:

• Advice on debt recovery and late payments
• Legal advice
• Discounts on offers on a wide range of leisure, insurance and retail products

Family benefits

Our benefits don’t end with you, they support your loved and your community too, some of our family benefits include:

• Our child benefit gives you a £50 payment to celebrate the birth or adoption of a child.
• Our charity fund has £500 every quarter to support all kinds of different charities and projects
• A higher education bursary of up to £4,500 to support lifelong learning

Making sure your voice is heard

Community will ensure your voices are heard not only through the next few weeks and months, but in the months and years ahead. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that the self-employed and freelancers need someone in their corner to make sure they aren’t left behind.

We are a proud campaigning union and the strength of our membership paired with our political affiliations means we can take the issues you care about and make sure they’re heard across the UK at every level.

Learning, training and education

We know one of the greatest difficulties for freelancers and self-employed is access to learning and up-skilling and opportunities. We offer self-paced, online training to help you sharpen and develop your skills in a flexible way.

Below you can view our booklet that explains all of our great benefits in more detail. You can view a downloadable version here.