The U.S. Labor Department this week announced its proposed rule to redefine who is considered an independent contractor and who is an employee. The proposal has the potential to misclassify millions of legitimate independent contractors in a way that threatens their income and livelihoods, as well as their health. … Read more …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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…
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 …
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…
As reported by The DI Wire: “Independent contractors in the financial arena are already highly regulated with compensation practices carefully monitored and reported. The PRO Act will neither help advisors nor their clients. Instead, it will only limit options for everyone.” … Read more…
“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…
Fight For Freelancers USA 