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 …
Tag: California
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 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…
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…
ATRI: Reclassification Would Decrease Owner-Operator Job Satisfaction, Income
As reported by HDT Heavy Duty Trucking: “The majority of owner-operators expect that they would experience significant decreases in their job satisfaction (73%) and annual income (68%) if they were reclassified to a company driver.” … Read more…
U.S. Senate HELP Committee Hearing on PRO Act Disappoints
“Yesterday’s hearing by the Senate HELP Committee focused almost entirely on making it easier for current employees to unionize, while failing to recognize how parts of the PRO Act would harm the country’s 59 million independent contractors…” Read more…
Why Entrepreneur Stands Against the PRO Act
As published by Entrepreneur: “According to a former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, the PRO Act would likely make it a violation of federal law merely to continue existing business relationships with some independent contractors, even though 79% of independent contractors say they prefer the current relationships to the types of traditional employer-employee jobs the PRO Act favors.” … Read more …
Alaskans don’t want California’s failed policies
As published in the Anchorage Daily News: “When Alaskans learned more about how the PRO Act would drastically alter current federal labor laws and significantly affect who was able to be an independent contractor in Alaska, more than 60% of Alaskans opposed the bill. This was true even among current union members who opposed the PRO Act by 57% after learning about its provisions. What’s more, 85% of Alaskans agreed that it was important they be able to choose to work as independent contractors. More than 80% believe federal laws should continue to protect the rights of Alaskans to work as independent contractors.” … Read more…
Fight For Freelancers USA 