Don’t Want None, Don’t Need None: POTATUS to ‘Help’ Freelancers With CA Style Regulations

Is there anything, any facet of American life that this administration can’t ruin? Isn’t working overtime to destroy?

Don’t answer that.

You don’t have to.

The evidence of their intentions pours forth from the feotid bowels of that Shelob’s lair of misery, malice, and incompetence every single day.

John Stossel published a piece yesterday that was momentarily overlooked in the gasps surrounding the inflation numbers, but people have sure found it now.

It has to do with Department of Labor rules that went into effect on March 11. 300 pages of new regulations, many of which reclassify formerly independent contractors as employees.

Sound like that failed California experiment? Exactly. 

What’s not to love for rampaging progressives and unions?

The Labor Department just imposed 300 pages of new regulations to reclassify many individual contractors as payroll employees.

CNBC claims this could help freelancers “recover lost wages.”

That’s just nonsense.

That was the righteous aim in CA, too, as these intrusive rejiggerings always are. And how’d that work out for them in the Golden State again? Something so wildly successful and necessary that the federal government simply to emulate and force on the entire country?

 It worked out as well as everything else CA’s done lately – a massive Schlitz sammich for all concerned.

…That law was so calamitous, despite its advertised intent of ensuring more employment benefits for more workers, even California had to admit it, scrambling to make fixes and hand out hundreds of exemptions to the law. Those exemptions are, of course, based on lobbying and political clout, leaving smaller, unconnected people to languish or leave the state. The list of exemptions is now more than 20 times longer than the original law. Some industries, like freelance transcription services, simply ceased to exist in California, said Karen Anderson, a freelancer who founded Freelancers Against AB5. Small community theaters suffered, unable to afford to make their freelancers into full-time employees, and that was before they got walloped by COVID restrictions. AB5’s opposition has collected the stories of hundreds of Californians and former Californians who had their livelihoods ruined or disrupted by AB5. 

“The chilling effect alone is enough to make a corporation or a business skittish about hiring an independent contractor at all,” Anderson said, noting the same is probably already happening with Biden’s regulation.

“It was just a complete and total dumpster fire (in California),” she said.

“Oh, gosh!” gushed the brainless Biden trust. “We simply must try it! The added bonus that it also helps their union buddies out by swelling those numbers with these newly reclassified “employees” left progs in hog heaven at the thought.

When the Senate refused to pass a bill ensuring the concept as law, the Biden administration did what it’s always done – tell a department head to draft “new regulations” and write their own rules.

Same – same.

…Unable to muster support in the Senate to pass the law, the administration turned to its bureaucratic buddies to implement the philosophy from his 2023 Labor Day proclamation – “when organized labor wins, our Nation wins.”

And that’s really the point of these laws. As demands for flexibility and novel work arrangements increase in the modern economy, driven in part by the policies of the pandemic era, fewer Americans work traditional jobs and fewer Americans are in unions. Biden and Newsom want more of them in unions, even if they don’t want to be. Supporters argue these laws simply prevent misclassification of workers, which deprives them of benefits they’re due. But there are already laws on the books to prevent misclassification. It’s no accident that the author of AB5, Lorena Gonzalez, leapt from the legislature to leading the California Labor Federation while California’s enforcer for AB5, Julie Su, is now acting Secretary of Labor. 

“Misclassification is not what this and AB5 are aimed at. What they’re aimed at is millions of other people who have willfully chosen to work independently bc that is what is best suited to their lifestyle,” said Rep. Kevin Kiley of California, who introduced legislation to nullify the rule under the Congressional Review Act and prohibit funding for its enforcement. “It makes absolutely no sense to say that because there are some folks out there who are genuinely misclassified, we should eliminate the rights of tens of millions of others to choose the working arrangements that they desire.”

Voilà – 300 new pages of federal regulations and reclassifications appear.

Freelancers did try to sue as soon as the proposed rules were announced.

…Freelance writers Karon Warren, Deborah Kaplan, Kimberly Kavin and Jennifer Singer have sued the Labor Department, asking a judge to place a preliminary injunction on the regulation that would immediately prevent its enforcement. The government plans to begin enforcement March 11.

The writers, who are the co-founders of Fight For Freelancers USA, a nonpartisan grassroots group that advocates to protect the choice of self-employment, ultimately want the court to declare the Labor Department’s rule unlawful and thus void.

‘Clear-as-Mud-Rule’

The plaintiffs say the department’s new regulation on freelancers is extremely vague and confusing, making it impossible for freelancers/independent contractors and businesses that work with them to comply. The result is that freelancers/independent contractors could lose their livelihoods, and companies will be deprived of their valuable work.

“This rule doesn’t actually protect freelance writers and editors like us, or any of the independent contractors in hundreds of professions ranging from trucking to financial services,” the plaintiffs wrote in an opinion article published by The Hill.

BiState Motor Carriers, which represents independent truckers working out of ports in New York and New Jersey, sued as well and won a temporary injunction. But that has since been lifted, and these rules have gone into effect. BiState continues to make sure the administration is aware of what independence in employment brings to the table.

If only @ActSecJulieSu would acknowledge all the Independent Contractor Owner-Operator Truckers in NY & NJ who are stepping in to pick up the slack & keep the supply chain moving smoothly, because their self-employed business model affords them the flexibility to adjust quickly. https://t.co/jV2ixiA1Wj

— BiStateMotorCarriers (@BiStateMC) April 1, 2024

The new reclassification could have serious impacts on labor participation figures, too, particularly among women and older folks.

…Liya Palagashvili — an economist at the Mercatus Center, a free-market think tank at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia — believes the rule will likely affect two groups the most: women, who tend to pursue flexible work opportunities more so than men, and older Americans.

“Since a lot of older Americans do seek out these flexible forms of work as they near retirement — or after — this rule will likely lead to reduced work opportunities for them,” she says.

Implemented in 2020 when acting U.S. Labor Secretary Su was California’s labor commissioner, California’s Assembly Bill 5, or AB5, similarly set out to protect workers by getting more people on the payrolls. But many Californians working as legitimate contractors suddenly lost income after businesses and nonprofits stopped working with them as freelancers and didn’t hire them as employees.

In a recent study, Palagashvili found that after California passed its law seeking to reduce the misclassification of workers, overall employment in the affected occupations fell by 4.4% on average, while self-employment shrank by 10.5%. The state ultimately exempted 110 occupations from the law after Californians complained. The DOL rule has no exemptions.

“These results suggest the DOL rule may lead to a significant decrease in self-employment in the U.S.,” Palagashvili says.

Democrats and progressives don’t want you to be self-employed and independent. You can’t be controlled nor contribute to the unions that provide the Democratic underpinnings for funding and campaign manpower.

With Democrats like the one in the video below who testified for the regulations today… 

totalitarians that think they own my time and life.

— NoelRegan (@NoelRegan99) April 11, 2024

…it’s going to be a long, hard slog to overturn them God forbid these authoritarians remain in power.

One more reason November is the election of a lifetime. 

Or a livelihood.