This week marks three years since California’s ABC Test-based Assembly Bill 5 was signed into law, kicking off a nationwide, union-led effort to reclassify tens of millions of self-employed Americans as employees who would then ostensibly gain traditional jobs and become eligible for unionization. But in the three years since this anti-independent contractor push began, its primary results have been the destruction of independent contractor careers and widespread citizen backlash against lawmakers and regulators who continue to champion the idea. … Read more …
Press and Releases
“Campaign for Our Careers” Named 2022 FOLIO: Eddie Finalist
Judges for the FOLIO: Eddie Awards, one of the most prestigious recognition programs in the publishing community, announced today that its finalists in this year’s competition include a series of articles published on Entrepreneur.com, reported and written by Fight For Freelancers co-founder Kim Kavin, about the need to protect the choice of self-employment. … Read more …
Independent Contractors Overwhelmingly Reject U.S. Labor Department Plans for Widespread Reclassification
So many independent contractors demanded to be heard at a public hearing Wednesday night about the U.S. Labor Department’s plans to redefine legal self-employment under the Fair Labor Standards Act that the department was unable to hear from all the attendees in the allotted two minutes each — even after splitting the hearing into two simultaneous video calls that lasted for two hours apiece. Read more …
Fight For Freelancers Launches #WhatTheHellDOL Social Media Campaign
Today, Fight For Freelancers joined forces with several other ad hoc groups of independent contractors nationwide to launch #WhatTheHellDOL, a social media campaign created in response to the U.S. Department of Labor’s announcement that it plans to rewrite the rules for who can legally qualify as self-employed. Read our press release …
Fight For Freelancers Files U.S. Supreme Court Amicus Brief
Fight For Freelancers has filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court representing more than 275,000 people, in support of a lawsuit by the American Society of Journalists and Authors, Inc., and the National Press Photographers Association that challenges California’s ABC Test law, Assembly Bill 5, on First Amendment grounds. Read the Fight For Freelancers press release, or read the Fight For Freelancers amicus brief.
Fight For Freelancers Requests Meeting with Senators Manchin, Sinema to Protect Independent Contractors
Today, the leaders of Fight For Freelancers sent this letter to U.S. Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, requesting a meeting to discuss the nomination of David Weil as wage and hour administrator at the U.S. Department of Labor, and to discuss continued efforts to limit the choice of self-employment with the ABC Test. Read the letter…
Fight For Freelancers Files Amicus Brief with National Labor Relations Board
Today, Fight For Freelancers USA led a nationwide coalition representing more than 250,000 independent contractors in filing an amicus brief before the National Labor Relations Board, in defense of the right to choose self-employment. Read our press release here or read the amicus brief here.
Women fighting to protect freelance jobs aren’t ‘hysterical’
As published in the Philadelphia Inquirer: “If the Great Resignation and the shift of even more women into self-employment does nothing else, it should be a clarion call to lawmakers, regulators, and thought leaders that it’s time for them to do a Great Rethinking about the need to protect all independent contractor careers.” … Read more …
We are America’s independent contractors, and we are terrified
As published in The Hill: “This entire push is terrifyingly detached from reality. Study after study shows 70 percent to 85 percent of independent contractors are just plain happier this way. Some 60 percent said in the thick of 2020s pandemic problems that no amount of money would get them to take a traditional job.” … Read more…
Non-Partisan Study Shows Overwhelming Majority of Gig Workers “See Themselves as Independent Contractors”
As published by JD Supra: “The study confirms that an overwhelming percentage of freelancers and other gig workers want legislators and government agencies to take a hands-off approach and leave existing independent contractor laws intact.” … Read more…
Fight For Freelancers USA 