On October 29, Charlie Wowkanech, who leads the New Jersey AFL-CIO, published an op-ed in the New Jersey Monitor attempting to defend the state’s use of the ABC Test for independent contractors.
Yesterday, the New Jersey Monitor published my response about this overly restrictive policymaking.
In this op-ed, I intentionally reframed the opening paragraphs that Wowkanech wrote last month. Like the ABC Test itself, his thinking is outdated, and his words desperately needed a rewrite.
Here’s the before and after:
That’s a nifty twist for all of my fellow freelance writers out there, but what I actually think is so important about this op-ed is that it’s not simply me sharing my opinion. This op-ed includes reporting from a recent New Jersey Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that hasn’t gotten even close to a meaningful amount of coverage, a hearing where anyone listening could plainly tell that the state’s new ABC Test rule is overly restrictive and wholly unworkable:
“The version of the ABC test rule that the Labor Department just adopted is scaled back, but it’s still so onerous that on October 15, the Senate Judiciary Committee spent nearly two hours asking acting Labor Commissioner Kevin Jarvis how anyone can actually pass the test. Democrats and Republicans alike said they were being hammered daily with calls from every conceivable industry — insurance, performing arts, amateur sports — because nobody can figure out what to do.
“One senator said he convened a group of accountants to gain some clarity, but they all gave him different answers. Laughter erupted in the chamber when Jarvis couldn’t seem to give a straight answer on how a business trying to comply could get the information required to do so. Yet another senator asked if there was going to be a Division of ABC Test Clarification to help everyone make sense of what’s going on.”
These are just some real-life consequences of a horrible policy decision that the administration of Governor Mikie Sherrill made in defiance of 99% public opposition here in my home state of New Jersey—ignoring an estimated 9,500 public comments that poured in to warn against this exact type of outcome.
The Part About Human Trafficking
My op-ed in yesterday’s New Jersey Monitor also includes this passage:
“Don’t let the headlines about Uber and Lyft fool you. What’s happening with New Jersey’s ABC test rule is some of the most extreme policymaking in the country. During the public-comment period for the ABC test rule, research that supporters cited raised many questions. The Workplace Justice Lab at Rutgers University used footnotes to cite research that also compares independent contractors to human trafficking, child labor, and workplace violence — literally comparing entrepreneurial effort to violent crime.
“These are extreme views. And yet it’s the extremists the Sherrill administration sided with when it defied the public’s 99% opposition and pushed the regulations through.”
You can read that Workplace Justice Lab public comment and learn about several of its fascinating footnote citations here. And if you want to read the book the comment cites that lists independent contractors alongside human trafficking, child labor and workplace violence as a problem to be solved, you can buy a copy here.
I bought that book and read it from cover to cover after realizing just how curious other cited research in this particular public comment was. The book details “creative ways” that people frustrated with the decline of labor unions are now using organizations that rely on fat philanthropic checks for their funding—not any actual, dues-paying members—to target political candidate selection and, ultimately, change laws that apply to everyone.
What Should Happen Next
My op-ed in the New Jersey Monitor ends with this:
“A basic principle behind New Jersey’s labor and employment laws is as necessary as ever: We all should be able to work in whatever ways work best for us, whether that’s as a union employee, a nonunion employee, an independent contractor, or a combination that includes a side hustle. Especially at a time when it’s increasingly hard to pay grocery and gas bills, everyone should have the freedom to choose any kind of work we want.”
What’s happening with the ABC Test regulatory language in New Jersey, and all across the country, is an attempt to restrict that freedom.
Our lawmakers have the power to protect us all from this madness. And what’s happening is, indeed, madness, as I documented in my 98-page Extremism vs. Entrepreneurism report published this past February based on all the public comments the New Jersey Labor Department received.
The New Jersey Legislature should immediately invalidate the ABC Test rule and put meaningful guardrails in place to prevent anything like this from ever happening again.
I’m happy to help with that policy rewrite, too, whenever lawmakers are ready to stand on the side of the state’s hardworking entrepreneurs.