A bill before the New York State Senate seeks to reclassify many independent contractors as employees, advancing a standard similar to California’s devastating state. Assembly Bill 5or AB 5. Recommended S2052 will implement the “ABC Test”, which classifies workers as employees unless (a) the worker is free from the control of the employing entity, (b) the work performed is outside the bailiwick of the employing entity, and (c) the worker is employed in the type of work “customarily engaged in”. is done
of S2052 Sponsor Memo The bill “gives American workers the most basic human right to have a voice in their jobs and a role in shaping their future.” However, individual agencies “in their future formation” would repeal the bill.
The government cannot turn every contractor into an employee, so making it impossible for employers to hire many independent contractors will make many independent contractors unemployed in their chosen careers. Opposition freelance politician, backed by Union, claim the benefits of “employee” status, but such benefits accrue to a few at the expense of many others. After the passage of AB 5 in California, for example, the sports network picked up SB Nation to finish About 200 freelancers, it has been reported replaced By just 20 full- and part-time employees. Those 20 people may have gotten more pay and benefits, but another 180 people lost income.
“New York assumes — as do other government entities and Democrats in general — that independent contractors are inherently, inevitably exploited and that they all want to be bona fide employees when that’s not the case at all,” says Ike Brannon, a senior fellow at the Jack Kemp Foundation. because. “Our Survey Among the 1,000 or so independent contractors in the Midwest in 2019, few actually want to be employed.” Indeed, in 2021, the Pew Research Center found That nearly 80 percent of gig workers “assess their experience in these jobs positively.”
Gig work is popular across the economy. In 2022, an estimated 60 million individuals—about 39 percent of the American workforce—will be engaged in freelancing. The supermajority cited benefits such as financial gain (83 percent) and schedule flexibility (73 percent). According to Freelancing platform Upwork. Consequently, cA crackdown on freelance work threatens the livelihoods of a variety of workers. “While media coverage of the issue focuses on platform-based gig workers,” Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, said. wrote“Workers injured by AB 5 included many tutors, Performers in music and theatreplumbers, nurse practitioners, the writerPhotographers, contract software developers, and many others, notably Owner-operator and others Independent Truckers”
Jim Manley, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, said a statutory exemption to New York’s worker-classification system could enable a court challenge to S2052. “Newspaper carriers are not employees under current New York law — clearly,” Manley said because. “And that means if you deliver a newspaper to somebody’s home, you can be an independent contractor, but if you deliver a political pamphlet, if you deliver commercial material, you can’t be an independent contractor under the ABC test,” he explained. , added that regulating different types of speech differently creates “a content-based distinction.”
New York, California, and many legislators Washington DC, seeks to deploy state power to adapt the labor force to their individual preferences. Such efforts are completely independent of economics and individuals’ own desires, and they rob citizens of their right to freely pursue happiness and success.