Now's a Good Time
We need federal legislation to prevent another nationwide wave of freelance busting like the one California's Assembly Bill 5 supercharged.
It’s been a long seven years.
Yes, we’re now into year seven of the supercharged wave of nationwide freelance busting that began in 2018, when California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez introduced Assembly Bill 5.
Union-backed Democrats had actually been trying for much longer than that, since at least 2007, to figure out ways to reclassify happily self-employed Americans as unionizable employees against our will, but it was the strategy of weaponizing regulatory language called the ABC Test the way California’s law did that has proved the most damaging and frustrating to date.
Even worse is that, despite all the evidence that continues to rack up about how trying to change the U.S. workforce in this way only causes financial damage and public outcry—it does not create jobs or grow unions, and in fact tanks people’s incomes and careers—the freelance-busting brigade is still trying to push this nonsense on us all.
There’s talk about it right now in Minnesota, in Michigan and in Nebraska.
President Trump’s nominee for U.S. Labor Secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, supported it when she was a member of Congress.
Current members of the Congressional Labor Caucus are still calling for passage of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act with the destructive ABC Test language in it.
There’s still a battle happening in multiple federal courts over the anti-independent contractor rule that the Biden-Harris administration put into place at the U.S. Labor Department. (I’m a plaintiff in one of those lawsuits.)
And this past weekend, the Democratic National Committee chose former union organizer Ken Martin as its new chairman, winning praise from the most vocal freelance-busting unionists in the country as the party plans its agenda for the next election cycle.
All of which means that now would be a really good time for Republicans to use their trifecta control in Washington, D.C., to pass legislation that protects and preserves every American’s freedom to choose self-employment.
Independent contractors comprise the vast majority of small-business owners in America. We contribute $1.3 trillion to the U.S. economy each year.
In the trucking industry alone, independent contractors affect an enormous chunk of the national supply chain. Independent contractors are nurses and translators and real-estate agents and veterinarians and writers and engineers and tutors and website developers and all kinds of other things spanning some 600 professions.
The time is now for Republicans to use the power voters just gave them to make sure that all of us can continue to earn a living and achieve the American dream.
Congress Is Ready
The good news is that in Congress, we have newly installed committee chairmen who are strong defenders of independent contractors, and who are positioned to advance legislation that will protect us.
In the U.S. Senate, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana is now the chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Cassidy has been a staunch defender of everyone’s freedom to choose self-employment, including having co-sponsored a joint resolution attempting to overturn the Biden-Harris administration’s anti-independent contractor rule.
Cassidy said at the time:
“The Biden administration’s priority should not be to do whatever makes it easier to forcibly and coercively unionize workers. It should be to increase individual freedom and opportunity,”
In the U.S. House, Representative Tim Walberg of Michigan is now the chairman of the Committee on Education & the Workforce. He, too, has been clear about his support for independent contractors, writing:
“Congress should be empowering American workers to make their own decisions about how best to earn a living for their unique situation. … I am proud to support efforts that push back on the overly restrictive Independent Contractor and Joint Employer rules that would impede individuals wishing to pursue independent work as well as harm entrepreneurs and small businesses across the country.”
And there is legislation ready to go that would do a lot to help. The Modern Worker Empowerment Act from the last session of Congress is written and out there for all Republicans to embrace immediately.
That’s the kind of legislation we need in the face of newly released union-density numbers that have the freelance-busting brigade in a panic, showing that yet again, the nation’s union membership has dropped to a fresh all-time low.
Panic about needing more union members is what breeds the kind of ridiculous, anti-independent contractor actions we’ve all been enduring in recent years.
We need a solid backstop against this freelance busting. And we need it right now.
Spread the Word
Lawmakers need to keep hearing from all of us who value the freedom to choose self-employment, especially with recent talk of a GOP faction working with the Teamsters to draft a new version of the PRO Act.
So far, there is no indication that this new version of the PRO Act will include a direct attack against independent contractors like the last version did, and we all need to make sure it stays that way.
We also need to make sure that instead of just playing defense against freelance-busting attacks, the Republican majority is going on offense to protect and preserve our freedom to be our own bosses.
This is where you can find and contact your U.S. Senators to tell them you want independent contractors protected.
This is where you can find and contact your member of the U.S. House to send the same message their way.
Call or send emails to the lawmakers who are paid to represent you in Washington. Insist that they make this policy area a priority in the next two years while they have trifecta federal control.
Yes, there's a lot going on right now with a lot of policy issues—but that’s precisely the point. We can’t let independent-contractor policymaking get lost in the shuffle.
Our opponents aren’t going anywhere. Our allies shouldn’t, either.