Posts tagged Bill Cassidy
Opinion: Congress should reject the Democrats’ workplace micromanagement bill
May 14, 2024 // On May 2, Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Tina Smith (D-Minn.) rolled out the Warehouse Worker Protection Act with Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, legislation that enacts a host of new government mandates on workplaces. Like the failed “Protecting the Right to Organize Act,” its end goal is to force more American workers into unions. The bill targets companies that use so-called “quotas,” framing attempts by employers to evaluate employee performance as inherently anti-worker. Despite the scary narratives progressives peddle, tracking employee performance is a common business practice, and employers use these metrics to ensure employees are operating safely and efficiently.
OPINION Congress must block Biden’s destructive labor policy
April 16, 2024 // .A California-based tutoring company provides one anecdotal example of the consequences. The company has already let go independent workers in the Golden State and—in anticipation of the nationwide DOL rule—has announced terminations in Massachusetts and New Jersey. It’s the proverbial canary in the coal mine. If Congress doesn’t act, the DOL’s rule risks replicating California’s dysfunction on a national scale. One estimate predicts the independent workers impacted by this rule could face more than $30 billion in lost income. That tracks with a recent Mercatus Center study on the impact of AB 5 in California. It found that after the law was implemented, self-employment decreased by more than 10 percent on average for affected occupations. Overall employment decreased by more than four percent.
Stalled Labor Pick Julie Su Lets Herself Off the Hook for California’s Missing Billions
April 2, 2024 // California’s auditor notes that the U.S. Department of Labor has issued helpful “guidance” for state finance officials in “Unemployment Insurance Program Letter 05-24.” Flip over to the U.S. Department of Labor’s DOL 05-24 letter and you learn what Julie Su is up to. The DOL memo says a Covid-era agreement between the feds and state unemployment departments “required states to use the CARES Act funds ‘for the purpose for which the money was paid to the state’ and to ‘take such action as reasonably may be necessary to recover for the account of the United States all benefit amounts erroneously paid and restore any lost or misapplied funds paid to the state for benefits or the administration of the Agreement.” But how will the federal DOL know whether states took “such action as reasonably necessary to recover” the billions stolen by fraudsters? Because the states will tell them so, or, as the DOL put it in inimitable Orwellian language: “Applying state finality laws to the CARES Act UC programs means that, in many instances, the state will not need to take retroactive action to resolve monitoring findings.”
Commentary: ATR Applauds House Education & Workforce Committee for Defending Independent Contractors
March 22, 2024 // “Independent contractors want to be their own boss. But Biden and the Democrats want to force them to HAVE a boss,” said Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform. Americans for Tax Reform applauds the House Education & Workforce Committee majority for passing Congressman Kiley’s resolution to nullify the Biden DOL’s harmful reclassification of independent contractors.
Could the U.S. adopt a four-day workweek?
March 16, 2024 // “They would ship those jobs overseas or they would automate to replace those workers for whom they have an increased expense, or they would dramatically increase prices to make them stay afloat,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said. Some witnesses in Thursday’s hearing agreed with Cassidy arguing it could put some industries and workers at a disadvantage. “We also potentially disadvantage older workers who cannot necessarily physically do the same amount of work in a shorter time,” Liberty Vittert, Professor of the Practice of Data Science at the Olin Business School said.
Commentary: Biden’s Independent Contractor Rule Threatens the Evolution of Work
March 15, 2024 // So what's the advantage of reclassifying independent workers as employees? The same as the disadvantage: It makes it harder for workers to be their own boss, to choose their own schedules, to represent themselves, to set their priorities as they see fit. If you believe in the evolution of the workplace and worker self-determination, this is bad. But if you believe in a one-size-fits-all work model where individuals are employed by traditional businesses and represented by traditional unions, this is great.
Over 30 Leading Policy Groups Send Coalition Letter to Congress Raising Concerns with Department of Labor’s Independent Contractor Rule and Its Crushing Impact on Independent Workers
March 11, 2024 // Vincent Vernuccio, president of Institute for the American Worker, said, “Instead of empowering workers to make their own decisions to earn a living in the best way to support their families, many policymakers in Congress and the White House want to stifle worker freedom and flexibility. The vague and authoritarian DOL rule will hold back growth, destroy jobs, and harm the very workers it purports to help.”
Opinion: Biden rule threatens to throw independent contracting into disarray
March 6, 2024 // For example, the U.S. Postal Service uses 7,900 contracted delivery services to reach about 3 million of its delivery points. The plainclothes carrier who delivers mail via her personal vehicle to my home in Shenandoah, Va., is presumably one of these contract drivers. Under the Biden administration’s new rule, she and potentially thousands of individuals like her would almost certainly be considered employees. That is because the work these contractors perform is “integral” to the Postal Service; the Postal Service exercises a high degree of direct and indirect control over these individuals by mandating where and when the work must be done, and the delivery contractors are not exercising significant “skill” or “initiative.”
Ranking Member Cassidy, Kiley Introduce CRA to Overturn New Biden Regulation Threatening 27 Million American Independent Contractors
March 6, 2024 // Independent contractors, or freelancers, make their own hours to fit their schedule and decide where and how they want to work. The Biden administration rule attempts to restrict the ability of American workers to be an independent contractor and take advantage of the flexibility it provides. The rule creates a non-exhaustive, six-factor litmus test for unelected bureaucrats to interpret and decide who is and who is not classified as an independent contractor. It also casts as large a net as possible and gives less legal certainty to independent contractors impacted by the regulation. “The Biden administration’s priority should not be to do whatever makes it easier to forcibly and coercively unionize workers. It should be to increase individual freedom and opportunity,” said Dr. Cassidy. “This new Biden rule does the opposite, jeopardizing 27 million workers’ ability to make their own hours and make a living without being pressured into joining a union.”
Kiley, Cassidy Introduce CRA to Overturn New Biden Regulation Threatening 27 Million American Independent Contractors
March 6, 2024 // “Independent contractors, entrepreneurs, and small businesses are fed up with the Department of Labor continually breathing down their necks,” said Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC), chairwoman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee. “The bicameral Congressional Review Act resolution led by Representative Kiley and Senator Cassidy offers Congress the opportunity to take a unified stand against the Department’s thirst for more government control over America’s workforce. Entrepreneurial opportunities and flexibility should be encouraged, not extinguished with heavy-handed mandates from the federal government.” “Gavin Newsom and Julie Su’s AB 5 severely restricted independent contracting in California, destroying thousands of livelihoods and harming California’s economy. As Acting Secretary of Labor, Su and the Biden Administration have announced a new Department of Labor rule, modeled after on the same job-killing AB 5 that will cost millions of independent professionals across the country their livelihoods while restricting the freedom of many millions more to have flexible work arrangements. Our legislation under the Congressional Review Act nullifies this terrible regulation and protects independent contractors,” said Representative Kiley. “Washington should support workers, not regulate them into oblivion.”