Posts tagged Phil Murphy
Federal lawsuit challenges New Jersey’s discriminatory hiring mandates and forced union speech requirements
May 3, 2026 // Contractors who do not meet the race- and sex-based hiring goals must either enter a referral agreement with a union—obtaining assurances that the union will supply the required minority workers—or complete 25 separate compliance actions. This structure pressures contractors to work through state-favored unions even though their employees chose Earle precisely because of its open-shop structure. The Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause explicitly forbids race- and sex-based classifications.
NEW JERSEY: NJBIA Urges Sherrill Administration to Not Adopt Independent Contractor Rule
April 29, 2026 // Further, in data highlighted in Extremism and Entrepreneurism, a 98-page report from Freelance Busting founder Kim Kavin, there is already empirical research by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University showing that New Jersey’s ABC test applications have already resulted in the following from 1995-2024: a 3.81% decrease in W-2 employment a 10.08% decrease in self-employment a 3.95% decrease in overall employment a 7.40% decrease in women’s W-2 employment Kavin’s report also found evidence suggesting the underlying claim by labor groups to restrict independent contracting in New Jersey was based “largely on mischaracterized data and research.”
Freelance Busting: The ABC Test Defense
April 22, 2026 // And perhaps most important, according to all of the oral testimony and thousands of written public comments submitted to New Jersey’s Labor Department, there are zero people being unknowingly classified as independent contractors. You can download and read here the eight (yes, only eight out of about 9,500) public comments that individuals supporting the proposed rule change filed. Not a single one of them says the person was unknowingly working as an independent contractor.
Commentary: Four Lies And A Truth
April 1, 2026 // The New Jersey AFL-CIO dropped some real whoppers in an email to state legislators about independent-contractor policy.
Kim Kavin Commentary: It’s Not There
January 22, 2026 // New Jersey's Office of Administrative Law confirms that Governor Murphy's independent-contractor rule is not adopted, as Governor Sherrill takes over.
New Jersey: ‘Billions of Dollars’
December 22, 2025 // Gonzalez and Asaro-Angelo are not the only people who have used the word billions. At the federal level, U.S. Congressman Bobby Scott of Virginia claimed in a January 2024 press release that misclassification was a nearly $4 billion per year problem—citing this research from, you guessed it, the Economic Policy Institute. But in December 2024, the U.S. Department of Labor announced that since January 2021—after nearly four full years of the Biden administration prioritizing the issue of employee misclassification nationwide—it had recovered only about $41 million in back wages for some 28,000 workers.
GSI, Kavin Give More Reasons for NJDOL to Abandon Independent Contractor Rule
November 3, 2025 // despite more than 99% of opposing comments to it, there were two new developments this week to show even more reasons why the effort should be abandoned. A new analysis from the Garden State Initiative showed how the rule would effectively threaten the livelihoods of thousands of freelancers, caregivers, and small business owners across the state. The report, Independent Contractor Rules Threaten New Jersey’s Small Businesses and Jobs: Lessons from California’s Failed Approach, said the rule would disproportionately affect “women and men with young children who rely on flexible hours,” retirees supplementing their income, and “immigrants and minorities, many who use gig work as a first step into the American workforce.”
Commentary: He Laughed Out Loud
October 2, 2025 // The Labor Department is part of the Murphy administration. The governor has the power to rescind this proposal, to protect the incomes and careers of New Jersey’s estimated 1.7 million independent contractors. He’s choosing not to do it, while laughing about it.
A Taft-Hartley Roundup of Recent Labor News
June 25, 2025 // For just shy of 80 years, conservative Americans and the Republican Party that provides their imperfect electoral vehicle have sought to advance a policy consensus on labor relations based on three principles: ensuring union membership and participation is voluntary, scrutinizing unions’ operations in exchange for their government-granted powers, and protecting the public from the fallout from labor disputes. As America sits by the pool at the beginning of what might prove to be a long, hot summer, what news is there about the Taft-Hartley consensus?
NJ Transit, engineers’ union reach deal to end strike and resume service Tuesday
May 18, 2025 // Neither Murphy nor the engineers' union shared the specific details of the agreement. “While I won’t get into the exact details of the deal reached, I will say that the only real issue was wages and we were able to reach an agreement that boosts hourly pay beyond the proposal rejected by our members last month