Posts tagged independent truckers
COMMENTARY: Californians Can Still Be Their Own Boss in the ‘Gig Economy,’ Also Known as the Free Market
August 6, 2024 // “Furloughed Californians stand on the verge of being wiped out financially because the law prevents them from working part time in a variety of indispensable positions,” read a letter from more than 150 of California’s leading economists and political scientists. “Blocking work that is needed and impoverishing workers laid-off from other jobs are not the intentions of AB-5, but the law is having these unintended consequences and needs to be suspended. Gov. Gavin Newsom declined to suspend the measure, but went on to violate his own rules on masks and impose a rigid lockdown on the people.
Independent contractor classification still murky under new DOL rule
July 8, 2024 // Bill Webb, executive director for the Coalition for Independent Truckers, is skeptical. “To me, it’s just another one of those deaths by 1000 cuts for the independent contractor model,” he said. He believes this year’s November election will be crucial in retaining the current model. “(The DOL rule) does clearly change from a true AB5 model to something a little muddier,
Isabel Soto: Biden’s war on freelancing affects the American dream
March 26, 2024 // The left’s war against self-employment is not a reform. It is paternalism: disconnected elites telling 70 million of happy, hurried Americans who don’t know what’s good for them. (It’s also cronyism, since the war on freelancing is fundamentally a project of the big unions, who hate competition.) And as always, when the government targets the proverbial “needy,” the real needy in our economy—women, minorities, and low-income communities—feel the pain. Half of Latinos are self-employed, 40% of African Americans, half of young workers, and more than half of low-income workers. An analysis by The LIBRE Initiative found that until 26% of independent workers are Hispanic and 14% of independent workers are black
Commentary: Melissa Melendez And Kevin Kiley: Learn From California’s Disastrous Contractor Rule
March 18, 2024 // According to a brand new study from the Mercatus Center, self-employment in affected industries has declined by a stunning 10.5% in California. Proponents had argued that these workers would simply be “reclassified” as full-time employees, but for many, that has not been the case. The same study found an overall 4.4% decline in employment in the industries that didn’t manage to get an exemption. Amidst these disastrous results, it is still unclear who has actually been helped by the new regime.
Be Careful, Mr. Trump—Big Unions Aren’t Your Friend | Opinion
March 14, 2024 // Like virtually all his fellow union bosses, O'Brien is desperate to put an end to state Right to Work laws so that unions can force workers across the country to pay dues. That is why he's suggested to Trump that if he opposes Right to Work, an endorsement might be possible. So far, Trump hasn't taken the bait. Instead, he's simply making the case that O'Brien should endorse him because life was better for all workers under his administration. Most media reports about the Teamsters' RNC donation failed to mention that the same Teamsters PAC also sent checks to the Democratic National Committee's convention fund, the DNC Legal Fund, DNC Building Fund, and to both the Democrats' House and Senate campaign committees.
New IC rule will have ‘unintended consequences’
January 23, 2024 // For Jim Burg, owner of Warren, Michigan-based James Burg Trucking Company, being an independent operator helped him build his business, and he views being an owner-operator as a potential stepping stone for others wanting to do the same. Burg started his company in 1984 with one truck as an independent contractor. His company is now a 94-truck operation with a terminal in Michigan City, Indiana. His trucks primarily haul steel for the automotive and manufacturing industries. "I drove over 1.2 million miles during the early years of my company's existence. Being an IC gave me the experience to understand the trucking industry and how to run a business, Burg recalled, "and it allowed me to gain knowledge of both as I set out to establish my own company."
OPINION: Sen. Sinema Shouldn’t Let Julie Su Turn Ariz. Into Calif.
June 5, 2023 // More than one million freelance workers lost work in the wake of AB5’s passage. In response to public outrage, the California legislature carved out scores of politically connected professions from the draconian legislation so that it no longer applied to musicians, translators, writers, photographers, and many others. But big labor’s main targets – independent truckers and the gig economy – are still suffering from AB5’s harsh policy. Even the notoriously left-leaning Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has suggested that AB5’s sponsors and enforcers may have had no legitimate policy objectives in mind when granting exemptions to AB5, and instead acted out of "animus" by targeting companies that facilitate vast swaths of independent contracting.
The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe; The Ballad of Tom Odom
January 18, 2023 // Will Swaim, journalist and president of the California Policy Center, educates us on CA Assembly Bill 5 (AB5,) which seeks to turn independent contractors into employees, and how it’s negatively affecting 70,000+ independent California truckers; truckers like Tom Odom, who calls in from the road to let us know why he is A.) part of a class action lawsuit and B.) moving to Texas. Spoiler Alert: it’s because of AB5!
UNION SPONSORED AB 5 HITS INDEPENDENT TRUCKERS
August 24, 2022 // For a while, AB 5, passed in the fall of 2019, didn’t affect truckers. It affected plenty of other people in plenty of other lines of work, prompting belated carve outs by the legislature to expand the list of exempted professions. Passage of AB 5 even provoked the ride share industry, led by Uber and Lyft, to raise over $200 million to qualify and run an initiative campaign, Proposition 22, to repeal the portions of AB 5 that affected their businesses. After Prop. 22 was approved by voters in November, four “gig drivers,” backed up by the SEIU, successfully challenged Prop. 22 in court. That ruling is now being appealed by Uber before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. "business to business” exemption, Borello test, California Globe
Californifying the U.S. Labor Market
August 23, 2022 // The Biden administration came into office with a sweeping union agenda embodied in the PRO Act, which would have rewritten key elements of decades-old American labor law. Stymied in Congress, however, the administration now seems likely to impose at least one component of that legislation on the workplace through a Department of Labor rule that would narrow the definition of an independent contractor in ways similar to California’s controversial AB5 law. Doing so would likely upset employment policies and practices at a vast array of businesses nationwide, just as has happened in the Golden State, where freelancers lost work because companies couldn’t afford to employ them full-time and truckers recently shut down a port to protest efforts to end their independent status. In the post-Covid world, workers are seeking more flexibility in income-earning. The Biden administration’s effort, which views the independent contractor almost exclusively as an exploited worker denied the benefits of full employment, is a step backward for individual workers—but a gift to unions.