Join CRA TODAY!
There is no “US” Without You!
Thank you for visiting us here at the online headquarters for THE CALIFORNIA REPUBLICAN ASSEMBLY.
If you find value in the work we are doing to help fight for conservative values here in the Golden State, PLEASE BECOME A MEMBER TODAY!
(NATIONAL REVIEW) – The Biden administration has effectively declared war on gig work, with its Department of Labor proposing a new federal regulation inspired by California’s controversial AB 5 law that would limit people’s ability to be classified as independent contractors and work as they choose.
As Bloomberg Law reports, “The US Labor Department’s new proposed worker classification test has parallels to California’s ‘ABC test’ [a provision of AB 5], which presumes workers are employees instead of independent contractors under the law.”
This proposal, if successful, would cruelly upset millions of lives. At least 57 million Americans are currently involved in gig work, a number expected to grow to more than 86 million within the next five years.
AB 5, which essentially bans independent contract and freelance work, was one of the most hated bills to emerge from the Sacramento sausage-making process in recent memory.
Using the aforementioned “ABC test” developed by the California Supreme Court, the law establishes who can legally work on a contractual basis and who must be a hired employee. The classification bar set by the test is so high that few freelancers can clear it. Consequently, almost every independent contractor has to become a hired employee, form their own business, or lose their job.
This is no accident: The aim of AB 5 was to force employers to put their gig workers on the payroll, along with all the costs — unaffordable for many businesses and organizations — that are associated with doing so.
In his public statements about the newly proposed regulation, Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh has resorted to the same duplicity that California lawmakers used first in passing, and then in defending, the indefensible AB5. In a recent press release, for example, Walsh said the rule is needed to safeguard “our nation’s most vulnerable workers,” ensuring that they are not deprived of “their federal labor protections.”
