The Ratio Reality

Protecting independent contractors is an 80-20 issue. Two bills in Congress show that on this one, Republicans stand with most Americans.

Republicans have become fond of saying they’re on the popular side of issues where the American electorate is split 80-20, while Democrats are on the unpopular side.

CNN commentator Scott Jennings recently explained it like this:

“He’s describing what is currently the dumbest strategy in politics, which is Democrats taking the 20 percent side of every 80-20 issue in America. USAID, people want this pared down. They want to streamline. They want to know where the money is going, Democrats have a meltdown.

”Today, Donald Trump signs an executive order on keeping boys out of girls’ sports, and Democrats take the 20 side of that issue as well.

”All these issues, this is like Trump’s superpower, finding a bunch of 80-20 issues, getting on the 80, and everybody who’s sort of reflexively against him gets on the 20. And now the Democratic Party has like a 31 percent approval rating. This is why.”

More than a few Republican lawmakers, political candidates and pontificators have been using this 80-20 language in recent days:

The 80-20 language is proving effective for the party that has all the power right now in Washington, D.C., and that is trying to solidify the shifting mojo among voters nationwide.

So, let’s discuss independent-contractor policy in the context of 80-20 issues.

Because if Republicans are looking for something else on which the majority of Americans agree—and on which Democrats are clinging to a deeply unpopular position—protecting our freedom to be our own bosses is absolutely it.

H.R. 1319 vs. H.R. 20

Two bills were recently reintroduced for the 2025-26 Congress that would affect everyone’s freedom to choose self-employment. These bills represent a clear distinction between Democrats and Republicans on independent-contractor policymaking, similar to the positions both parties took on California’s Assembly Bill 5, which went into effect in January 2020.

Top Democrats and unionists supported AB5 in California, while Republicans opposed it—and it was Republicans who ended up with the strongest case for their position being the correct one.

AB5 galvanized thousands of independent contractors into advocacy action and led to a slew of outcry in the media as people’s incomes and careers were threatened or destroyed. AB5 also proved unpopular with the overall majority of voters in the state, who used a ballot initiative to slap back what the Democratic supermajority in Sacramento was trying to do. Nonpartisan state analysts had warned, from the start, that AB5 would lead to at least some independent contractors being financially harmed. Economists have since documented that there was real reason for this concern: AB5 tanked self-employment and overall employment statewide.

Now, we have the two bills in Congress: one bill that would spread the regulatory language from California’s AB5 nationwide, and another bill that would stop that from happening.

The opposing policy stances could not be clearer:

• Democrats, led by Senate and House Minority Leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, both of New York, just reintroduced the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize Act. Named for a former head of the AFL-CIO, this bill, H.R. 20, does the same thing that California Governor Gavin Newsom claimed AB5 would do. The PRO Act aims to reclassify independent contractors as employees as a way to empower union organizers. As Jeffries put it in Congress: “When our unions are strong, the United States of America is strong.”

• Republicans, led by Rep. Kevin Kiley of California, put forward the Modern Worker Empowerment Act. This bill, H.R. 1319, aims to stop California’s experiment from spreading. It would protect everyone’s freedom to be our own bosses. As Kiley put it: “California’s disastrous AB5 law wreaked havoc on independent workers, stripping them of their ability to work on their own terms and forcing businesses to cut off contractor relationships. Shifting federal regulations threaten to impose similar uncertainty nationwide, putting millions of workers at risk.”

These two bills represent a clear distinction in how lawmakers believe Americans should be legally allowed to earn money.

Democrats are saying the government should force as many people as possible into traditional, unionizable jobs.

Republicans are saying the government should allow people to make our own choices, whether that means a traditional, unionizable job or being our own bosses.

The history of California’s AB5 strongly suggests which position will likely resonate in this nationwide policy debate—and there’s plenty of data to prove that it’s the kind of 80-20 issue Republicans are now seeking to champion.

Here’s the Data

First, let’s look at data about independent contractors themselves. Depending on whose definitions and numbers you want to believe, between 22 million and 72 million Americans earn some or all of our income as independent contractors. According to the Census, we contribute $1.3 trillion to the U.S. economy each year. Those of us who pay our bills entirely through self-employment, or with a combination of roles that includes a side hustle, are a significant voting bloc—compared to, say, the 14 million Americans who get their paychecks from union jobs.

When researchers ask independent contractors, year after year, whether we wish to remain self-employed, 80% to 85% of us say yes.

This data goes back decades. And more importantly for political purposes, prominent Democrats know it—yet keep sponsoring legislation that threatens the freedom to choose self-employment anyway.

In 2015, the U.S. Government Accountability Office sent a report to Democratic U.S. Senators Patty Murray and Kirsten Gillibrand that cited research showing “more than 85% of independent contractors and the self-employed appeared content with their employment type.” Both senators and their party’s leaders ignored it, with Murray and Gillibrand joining the vocal supporters of legislation to restrict self-employment.

During all the years between 2015 and today, precious little has changed about how independent contractors feel. We still prefer to remain our own bosses. Just a few months ago, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics issued its most recent findings:

“As in prior surveys, independent contractors overwhelmingly preferred their work arrangement (80.3 percent), whereas 8.3 percent would prefer a traditional work arrangement.”

Digging even deeper, if you look only at the less than 10% of independent contractors who do app-based “gig work,” it’s still an 80-20 split:

Talk about a consistently clear 80-20 issue. The vast majority of America’s independent contractors wish to remain self-employed.

Now, pair that data point with research that the National Right to Work Committee touts based on research involving the entire American electorate.

This Right to Work organization focuses on employees, not independent contractors, but its purpose is to guarantee that no worker can be forced to pay dues to a labor union. As I noted in this recent Q&A with Jace White, the committee’s director of federal affairs, his group’s goals are in the same neighborhood, and arguably on the same block, as independent contractors’ fight to stop union-driven freelance busting.

When the question is put to the general public about how we should all be able to earn a living, framed in Right to Work language, it’s also an 80-20 result—including among rank-and-file union members themselves:

Now, let’s look at Gallup research, which has also consistently shown two things to be true. One thing is that most Americans support unions. Given the way Gallup frames its question, it’s reasonable to say that most Americans believe employees who wish to join a union should be allowed to do so.

But in those very same surveys, when Gallup asks nonunion American employees if they personally wish to join a union, 80% either say no or strongly no, or are at best neutral on the subject:

No matter how the questions are asked, from which angle, year after year, it is evident that Americans stand on the side of being free to choose how we earn a living.

It is also abundantly clear that this is an 80-20 issue.

The vast majority of us want all of the pathways to the American Dream open and protected, so we can go through our lives working in whatever way we decide works best for us and our famlies.

Effective Messaging

With the policy stances of both parties clear, and with the beliefs of most Americans clear, the other key remaining element in this policy battle is messaging.

Democrats, for years, have been trying to find language that will get Americans to support what is, at its core, a deeply unpopular policy position. Back in 2007, a little-known senator named Barack Obama joined with Senator Murray and others on a bill they presented as a way to stop the “misclassification” of unionizable employees as independent contractors. The Democratic Party continues to use that “misclassification” language—even though misclassification is not nearly as big of a problem as they have long claimed. More recently, Democrats have started wrapping the “misclassification” language inside messaging about the need to give everyone the “freedom to join a union.”

This language about the “freedom to join a union” was all over social media last week as Democrats reintroduced the PRO Act:

The goal with this type of language is obvious: Unionists and union-backed lawmakers want to frame everyone who opposes the PRO Act as being anti-union. Indeed, they may believe this message will be especially effective right now against the Trump-Vance administration, which is trying to figure out how to support the many rank-and-file union members who voted Republican in the most recent election.

But calling opposition to the PRO Act “anti-union” simply is not true.

Every American, right now, has the freedom to take a traditional job as an employee and then choose whether to join a union. Nobody with a major voice in this debate—not those of us with Fight For Freelancers, and not the Right to Work folks, either—is saying that this freedom to choose a union job should be taken away.

What we are saying—and what the vast majority of Americans are saying right along with us—is that we want the freedom to work in whatever way works best for us.

It doesn’t matter if we’re Republicans or Democrats, men or women, black or white, older or younger, doctors or construction workers. The data shows that on an 80-20 basis, Americans want all the possible pathways to success open. We want to be able to choose a union job, a nonunion job, being an independent contractor, or some combination of a job and a side hustle.

We want the freedom to earn a living in all kinds of ways.

That’s the kind of freedom for American workers that Republicans need to focus on in their messaging, to make clear that they stand with the vast majority of hardworking Americans on the popular side of this 80-20 issue.

The GOP should make this policy distinction clear:

• Democrats, with the PRO Act, want to restrict everyone’s options to achieve the American Dream by forcing most people down one path, and one path only: traditional union jobs.

• Republicans, with the Modern Worker Empowerment Act, want to protect every possible path to the American Dream: union jobs, non-union jobs and self-employment, so we can all work in the ways that work best for us.

If commonsense, easy-to-understand, 80-20 issues are what the Republican Party wants to focus on, then protecting everyone’s freedom to choose self-employment should be at the top of the list.

Passing the Modern Worker Empowerment Act should be a priority in Congress, and President Trump should eagerly sign it into law.