Posts tagged misclassification
Op-ed: LABOR SEC CHAVEZ-DEREMER: Our plan to rescind the Biden independent contractor rule
March 15, 2026 // In that spirit, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division released a proposed rule that provides clarity to help workers and employers alike determine when a worker is properly classified as an independent contractor and when that worker is an employee owed rigorous protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). In proposing this rule, we celebrate the decisions of Americans who choose to test their entrepreneurial spirit — the same spirit on which our country was founded 250 years ago.
WATCH: I4AW’s Jonathan Wolfson Testifies Again: Portable Benefits Bill Considered in Kansas House of Representatives
February 11, 2026 // Visiting Fellow Jonathan Wolfson testified before the Kansas House of Representatives to offer expert analysis on HB 2602, a state bill that would allow businesses that hire independent workers to pay for benefits like retirement accounts or insurance without risking being punished by the government for "misclassifying" the freelancer as an independent worker instead of an employee.
The Importance of Protecting Portable Benefits
August 19, 2025 // The modern gig economy employs about 75 million workers. The provision of benefits is, of course, a positive for these freelance workers – so if businesses wish to provide them, they should be able to do so without fear of misclassification lawsuits. In short, Congress should consider these bills as a positive for both the millions of gig workers and the businesses that wish to provide them competitive benefits packages.
Commentary: The 2025 Battle of Trenton; Video
June 25, 2025 // The opposition to independent contractors was frustratingly predictable. Most of it, as usual, came from unions—including the AFL-CIO, Teamsters and IBEW. Others who testified against us were a representative of the union-affiliated National Employment Law Project (you may recall us crushing them in Congress last month), a couple of union-side lawyers, and a guy from the Workplace Justice Lab at Rutgers University, whose stated mission includes building unions.
Federal lawsuit alleges discrimination against Vietnamese women nail techs
June 3, 2025 // Licensed barbers, cosmetologists, estheticians and electrologists can still work as independent contractors under state labor law without being subjected to a rigorous test. But exemptions under Assembly Bill 5 expired this year for manicurists. The change has left manicurists and nail salon owners alike confused as to whether non-employees can continue renting booths for their businesses — a decades-long industry practice.
Commentary: Cutting red tape for 64 million American workers
June 1, 2025 // Americans and freedom are a perfect match. We don’t want the government dictating every aspect of our lives. Unelected bureaucrats have no role in deciding how everyday Americans should do their work. That’s why at Americans for Prosperity, we’ve always supported the right of workers to choose what type of work best suits them, and bills like the Modern Worker Empowerment Act and the Modern Worker Security Act do just that.
Kim Kavin: The Tangled Web
May 23, 2025 // I know how most writers’ minds work. I have a well-honed instinct for spotting a thread I should pull on because the facts might be tangled up in some kind of web. This hyperlink in Newsweek was a different kind of typo. The words “2020 analysis” actually did lead to a report about independent contractors—one that was written not in 2020, but instead in 2009. A wrong hyperlink of that nature is a red flag to any decent editor that there’s probably an association in the writer’s mind between the words in the hyperlink and where that link goes. Any experienced editor will pull on that thread to figure out if there’s an actual problem with the facts.
Commentary Kim Kavin: Worse than California’s AB5
May 6, 2025 // They tried, and failed, to do just that back in 2019-20 with legislation that mirrored California’s disastrous freelance-busting ABC Test law. Independent contractors from all across New Jersey cried foul. Our elected officials ultimately decided this policy was a bad idea for the Garden State. Trenton bureaucrats are now moving to impose this ABC Test interpretation on us all anyway, through rule-making, in their final months of having power before this fall’s election.
Liya Palagashvili: The Portable Benefits Revolution: How Did We Get Here?
May 1, 2025 // Senator Bill Cassidy just put flexible benefits on the map. This is the story of how a niche policy idea climbed to the top of the Congressional agenda.
CA requires public school unionization lessons, bans mandatory anti-union work meetings
January 2, 2025 // Two new laws — AB 800, signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023, and now SB 399, signed into law by Newsom this year, are set to help maintain or even increase union membership in the state. AB 800, signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023, requires California high school juniors and seniors to be taught about their workplace rights, the achievements of organized labor, and students’ right to join a union. Education site Chalkboard News used public records requests to discover what exactly this new law is having teachers cover.