Opinion
By Jennifer Oliver O’Connell, Red State
01-15-2024
While you were distracted by all things Iowa, Hunter Biden, and Trump throwing Vivek Ramaswamy under the bus, the Biden administration is eroding small businesses and snatching away the livelihoods of independent contractors through bureaucratic fiat. The Acting Secretary of Labor, Julie Su, quietly dropped a revised Independent Contractor Rule on January 9, and it’s as bad as expected. California Rep. Kevin Kiley (R), who has been at the forefront of this war against independent professionals since his time as an Assemblyman, rendered the bad news ahead of the Department of Labor announcement.
It’s official. Gavin Newsom’s war on workers has just been taken national by Biden and Julie Su. They’ve announced an “Independent Contractor” rule based on California’s notorious AB 5 law. It will put millions of Americans out of work.
That’s a conservative estimate. Since 2022, there are 57.3 million Americans who consider themselves freelancers, independent contractors, self-employed, or entrepreneurs. The legacy media’s tendency to lump all of these categories under the “gig” economy simply frames it in people’s minds as technology or rideshare; but these are your dental hygienist, your child’s soccer coach, fabricators, farriers, and home health care providers, to name just a few. Over 600 professions have been identified that would be upended or outright eliminated when this DOL IC Rule takes effect.
Kiley went on to talk about the wreckage AB5 left behind. Wreckage that, four years later, still has not been fully quantified. Americans can expect the same damage nationwide if this rule is allowed to be implemented.
Read the full article here: California’s AB5 Goes National With the Independent Contractor Rule: Why You Need to Pay Attention – RedState
The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida