The Vote

Today in New Jersey, senators were offered a chance to scrap the Labor Department's freelance-busting rule. Democrats in the majority kept the rule in place.

At today’s New Jersey Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee hearing, there were some fireworks about a bill that would give carveout protections to certain financial and insurance professionals, as well as tow truck drivers for AAA, while leaving the Labor Department’s newly adopted rule in place to threaten all the other hundreds of types of independent contractors in the state.

You can watch the full hearing here. The Q&A about this bill is at the very end.

Below are three clips that I found highly compelling—including the committee being given an opportunity to fix the ABC Test regulatory-language problem that the Labor Department’s new rule just exacerbated for everyone.

Republicans voted to scrap the Labor Department’s rule altogether.

Democrats, who are in the majority, voted to keep it.

The Clips

The first exchange of note was between Republican state Senator Declan O’Scanlon and witness Eric Richard of the New Jersey AFL-CIO.

Everywhere in the country, for years now, the AFL-CIO has been claiming that we need all these new freelance-busting laws and rules because there is a widespread problem of employees being misclassified as independent contractors.

Quite a few of us have been saying for a very long time that the math ain’t mathin’ on that claim. That the data about misclassification is bogus in California. That the research about misclassification is mischaracterized in New Jersey. That the testimony being presented in front of Congress is ridiculous.

Today, Senator O’Scanlon dropped the mic in proving we’ve been right all along. He got hold of New Jersey’s numbers.

Only about 700 complaints about misclassification are being received each year in my home state, and almost all of them are about app-based work—in a state with an estimated 1.7 million independent contractors in hundreds of other professions.

Next, Senator Michael Testa, also a Republican, talked about a hearing in 2019 where all of us independent contractors packed a State House hearing to stop freelance-busting legislation. Testa notes that he has a bill (say it louder!) to remove New Jersey entirely off the weaponized ABC Test regulatory language that is causing all of these problems:

Finally, Senator O’Scanlon came back on the mic to offer an amendment that would scrap the Labor Department’s newly adopted freelance-busting rule altogether.

All the Republicans voted for it, to try and help all kinds of independent contractors.

All the Democrats, who are in the majority, shot it down.