Flexible work is highly valued by Americans today, and it motivates people. This Small Business Week, an encouraging new poll revealed the electorate‘s views of independent work and why it’s important to preserve self-employment in America. Policymakers would be wise to stand with the self-employed, freelancers, and gig workers, not against them.
In a newly released poll, wide margins of voters overall and key voter demographics, including women, seniors, young people, and independents, expressed their support for independent work arrangements. Critically, voters strongly oppose the government’s thumb on the scale against independent contracting.
The Independent Women’s Forum found that 82% of voters agree that the government should not force people to work nine-to-five jobs but allow people the flexibility to be independent contractors. By an even wider margin (91%), voters said flexibility is important to workers, especially parents and caregivers.
Caregiving drives many workers to opt out of traditional employment to work for themselves. Eight in 10 voters in the poll said they believe that independent contracting is a good option for people seeking flexible jobs.
Giving workers the choice of when, where, how, and who they work for should be a fundamental freedom. However, it’s under attack today.
Policymakers and activists are finding ways to force independent contractors (i.e., 1099-income earners) to become employees of the companies that contract their work. This matter is an offshoot of a larger labor policy debate about unionizing private-sector employees. Independent contractors cannot be unionized. By forcing the reclassification of up to 72 million Americans — that’s the number of people who freelanced in 2023 — labor unions could gain a massive pool of dues payers.
We’ve seen this dynamic at work before. California passed legislation in 2019 to force a massive reclassification of independent workers as employees. The state adopted a stringent three-part worker classification test that assumes workers are employees and forces them to jump high hurdles to prove otherwise.
Union-backed lawmakers intended to punish gig economy companies such as Uber, whose drivers are independent contractors. However, many self-employed professionals across hundreds of occupations, from artists to transcribers to social workers to mortgage brokers, were forcibly reclassified as traditional employees.
This led to workers losing incomes, contracts, and livelihoods. Self-employment in California plummeted 10.5%, and overall employment fell 4.4%, according to analysis by the Mercatus Center.
Other states copying California, such as Illinois, are prompting freelancers such as Cynthia Clampitt, a Midwestern foodie, to speak out. Clampitt parlayed her proclivity for writing into a career documenting food history. Independent contracting empowered her to travel globally while conducting regional food research to earn a living and care for her mother in the final years of her life.
Federal lawmakers have sought to nationalize California’s pain, something Clampitt predicted would lead to her livelihood being “completely crushed.” Although the Biden administration could not copy and paste California’s Assembly Bill 5 into its regulations finalized last year, it tried. The regulation introduced new confusion and complexity into whether workers must be classified as employees or independent contractors.
We cannot count on the Trump Department of Labor to use new regulations to overturn the Biden rule. Former President Joe Biden used the regulatory process to rescind the previous, more contractor-friendly Trump rule. We need legislation to guarantee the freedom to work.
After a failed attempt by House Republicans to overturn Biden’s rule under the Congressional Review Act, Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) introduced the Modern Worker Empowerment Act, which would provide a clear and predictable test to determine worker classification under federal labor law. He knows all too well the hardship his state imposed on its flexible workforce.
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Congress must end the ping-pong game of worker classification. Kiley explained this bill would “prevent future administrations from undermining independent workers and provide businesses with the confidence to fully engage with a modern, flexible workforce.”
Protecting self-employment, freelancing, and even gig work is important to constituents and our economy. The expansion of these industries is a testament to the entrepreneurial spirit that’s alive today. We cannot let the Left’s bad policy snuff it out.
Patrice Onwuka is the director of the Center for Economic Opportunity at the Independent Women’s Forum and co-host of WMAL’s O’Connor & Company.