SPECIAL FOR: Isabel Soto
As the president war Joe Biden against labor independent enters its fourth year, the economy bill is gaining grim attention. It turns out that the government’s attacks on flexible, independent, and autonomous work have hit the people who depend on it most: women, minorities, and the marginalized.
One of President Biden’s most recent actions is a new rule issued by the Department of Labor to reclassify millions of independent workers as formal employees. Management believes this type of work is exploitative and that people would be better off with traditional work arrangements.
Except independent contractors prefer their independence! Freelancing is not a fringe deal. It didn’t simply arise from mobile apps like Uber and Instacart, which represent only a tiny fraction of freelancing. The independent workforce produce half a trillion dollars a year and includes 36% of American workers. He 79% of them are not even interested in traditional jobs. three quarters they say that flexibility and independence (“being your own boss”) is what they like most. “Freelancers” too Earn more money, on average, than traditional employees.
It’s no surprise that the people who set their own schedules, choose their own projects, and enjoy higher incomes are the workers. more optimistic of the economy. Or that a third of people who quit their jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic did so specifically to start their own businesses.
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. The Flexibility of Independent Contracting is also favored by working mothers, people caring for elderly relatives, people who have lost another job, and people whose job prospects are hampered by previous contacts with the justice system.
Contrary to politicians’ fairy tales, real workers know that the supposed benefits of being employees will not be available if companies cannot afford to hire them full-time. If the government increases the cost of hiring workers, common sense suggests that companies will hire fewer workers or hire them only part-time. Not surprisingly, that is exactly what has happened when independent contracting has been restricted at the state level.
California’s anti-gig law, AB5, is the largest experiment of its kind. It is a continuous disaster.
As soon as it went into effect in 2020, and politicians in the big government bureaucracy congratulated each other on their moral heroism, the ax fell on real workers. Throughout the state, freelance journalists were laid off (in fact, AB5 likely violates writers’ first amendment right to publish their work). Independent truckers facing unemployment simply left and They left the state. Uber estimated that he would have to fire the 76% of the drivers on your network. A study project that banning independent rideshare drivers would eliminate up to 87% of current drivers’ “income opportunities.” California’s huge entertainment industry also fell to its knees. Independent actors, singers, dancers and musicians were suddenly unable to work.
And that doesn’t even count the types of specialized skills that have always lent themselves to side jobs, such as translation, editing, court reporting, hairdressing, photography and videography. Professional associations across the state sued Sacramento on behalf of their members’ right to earn a living. The law was such a spectacular failure that, within months, the legislature had to pass another law excluding dozens of professions from catastrophic regulation.
Biden’s Labor rule pursues the same goals as AB5 and would put the monthly incomes of tens of millions of Americans, mostly women (especially mothers) and minorities, at risk.
Yet despite its economic cost, the real damage Biden’s war on freelancing is inflicting is manifesting itself in the American Dream itself.
The freedom to work is what makes America the land of opportunity. This is how successive waves of immigrants built the most prosperous economy in the world. And that’s why people from all over the world still flock to our shores. Only privileged elites and disconnected politicians talk about work as a difficulty. For everyone else, especially the underprivileged, work is a ladder they want to climb! Who are the politicians and bureaucrats to tell them they can’t?
Freelance work is what allows Americans (especially women, blacks, and Hispanics) to pursue their American dream on their own terms. The war on labor – like AB5 in California and Biden’s new Labor rule – is not just terrible politics. It is a disastrous fact and that’s it.
Isabel Soto is Policy Director of The LIBRE Initiative.
This column first appeared in English in the Washington Examiner. Click here to read the original version
