Posts tagged ABC test
Independent Contracting in 2025
January 8, 2025 // Independent contractors forgo workplace benefits that employees receive. Portable benefits are a way to give them access to benefits untethered from employment with one employer.
COMMENTARY: These Punches Landed
October 24, 2024 // What you have is a task force that’s heavy on unionists. I understand why you want to help unions: Membership is at an all-time low, and Gallup says 80% of people either don’t want to join a union, or are at best neutral on the subject. But when you try to solve that union problem by destroying the livelihoods of independent contractors, all you do is come off as extremists.
The Highest Stakes Commentary: Kim Kavin
October 16, 2024 // In this version of the ABC Test, Part B states that a person can only be a legally operating independent contractor if: The person performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business. That line has been an unmitigated income- and career-destroyer for Californians in more than 600 professions. It hit everyone from comedians who could no longer perform at comedy clubs to translators who could no longer provide translation services for translation companies to freelance writers who could no longer write articles for publishers. Owner-operator truckers are still battling in the courts and trying to explain how it could decimate the supply chain, with the threat of taking so many self-employed truckers off the road. The damage to people’s livelihoods was so significant that within a year—just one year—of AB5 going into effect:
DOL Making it Harder to Hire Independent Contractors
October 1, 2024 // The DOL’s test is just one of many. The IRS uses a “right-to-control” test, which is generally more business-friendly, focusing on whether the hiring firm controls how the work is done. In contrast, many states apply the strict ABC test, where a worker must: ⦁ be free from the company’s control, ⦁ work outside the usual course of the hiring firm’s business, and ⦁ be engaged in an independent business or trade.
Commentary: California’s Unions Lost Their Long Battle Against Uber and Lyft
August 13, 2024 // The state Supreme Court unanimously ruled that ridesharing drivers can be exempted from California's crackdown on independent contracting.
Opinion: Congress Doesn’t Care About Freelancers — and It May Cost Them at the Polls
August 11, 2024 // Supporters of reclassification do not understand how essential independent contracting is to our livelihoods. This was evident in 2020 in the fight against California’s AB5—a law implementing a restrictive ABC test that reclassified many independent contractors as employees and inspired the DOL’s new rule. One elected state official claimed the independent status being stripped from us was just “taking away our lollipops.” Instead, AB5 hollowed out self-employment, pushed up unemployment, and destroyed many livelihoods in the process. While California is not in play in this election, Virginia is. Independent professionals are aware of what they will lose if similar policies are nationalized.
AB5 specifically targets interstate truckers, OOIDA says
August 8, 2024 // “AB5’s blanket prohibition of leased owner-operators constitutes an unreasonable burden on interstate commerce in violation of the dormant Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution under the test established by the Supreme Court in Pike v. Bruce Church Inc.,” OOIDA wrote. “Under Pike’s balancing test, AB5’s burden on leased owner-operators is absolute, and the benefits to the state are minimal, if not illusory. There is no cost truckers can incur or administrative hurdle they can overcome to keep their independent contractor small businesses as leased owner-operators.”
Kamala Harris’s War on American Workers
July 29, 2024 // Harris’s labor policy platform is designed to force every American worker into a union. Big Labor is one of the Democratic Party’s fattest cash cows, spending at least $1.8 billion to elect the Biden-Harris ticket and down ballot Democrats in 2020. The more union dues-paying workers there are, the more money flows into Democratic campaign coffers. The centerpiece of Harris’s plan is banning right-to-work laws, which allow workers to earn a living without being forced into a union as a condition of employment. Right-to-work laws, which protect more than 166 million Americans in 27 states, promote economic growth and prosperity.
COMMENTARY: Kamala’s “PRO Act” Would Ban Right-to-Work and Destroy Independent Contractors Nationwide
July 29, 2024 // The PRO Act is a return on the investment of the hundreds of millions of dollars that Big Labor poured into the Democratic Party’s campaigns to capture the House, Senate, and White House. Employers will be able to force workers into unions as a condition of employment, and union bosses will have access to personal information to bully workers into compliance. Tens of millions of independent contractors would face losing their jobs.
OPINION: Would Harris Be Better than Biden for Independent Contractors?
July 11, 2024 // It’s imperative for the tens of millions of Americans who earn some or all of their income as independent contractors to understand where she stands when it comes to money that is earned through self-employment. The record shows that Harris poses a real threat to independent contractors’ income, and for many of us, to our entire careers.