"I agree to indemnify the company..."We all make mistakes, but is it right to ask individuals to indemnify global media corporations -- and will individual insurance policies cover it? The trend towards parcelling out increasing amounts of work to freelances and packagers seems to have prompted many publishers to look for ways to avoid problems that might arise from the lack of control they have over the quality of the material they publish and over the work availability of their army of freelances.
Most recently, a major educational publisher in Oxford has introduced a new freelance contract, which amongst other things requires every freelance to indemnify the company against any claims, liabilities, costs and expenses incurred as a direct or indirect result of an error or omission by the freelance.
A quick survey of practices in similar workplaces around Oxford and beyond revealed that this indemnity clause has reared its threatening head elsewhere, though in some cases freelances have simply struck out the offending words and carried on as normal.
A separate clause of this particular new contract requires every freelance to take out liability insurance and maintain it for a minimum of three years after any work they do for the company. This could result in the hapless freelance having to pay £600 in insurance costs for the privilege of doing a single job (3 years @ £200 a year). More worrying is the legal advice from lawyers working for Society of Freelance Editors and Proof Readers, SFEP, that any personal insurance taken out by freelances could be nullified where the freelance has aksi signed a clause assuming responsibility for costs of any action taken against the company.
For an insurance company, insuring an individual freelance against a claim against them is presumably a very different deal from agreeing to underwrite a freelance who has agreed to indemnify a major publishing company against any claims, liabilities, costs and expenses that might be incurred as a direct or indirect result of their error or omission. “Don’t sign,” was the advice of the SFEP lawyer.
Staff at are now stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place, having to persuade people to sign the clauses or risk losing experienced freelances on whom they are heavily dependent.
The April NUJ branch agreed to circulate all freelance members to find out who works for which educational publishing house and work with SFEP to establish chat groups for freelances to monitor these contracts and try to develop a collective response.
AW 2008-05-01
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