Progressives are forcing 20th-century rules on 21st-century workers.
For close to a decade now, policymakers have been locked in a battle over how to regulate workers in the gig economy. These debates have played out in courtrooms, state legislatures, federal agencies and the halls of Congress. To date, most of the arguments have focused on how gig workers should be classified — as independent contractors, like they were traditionally recognized to be, or as full-time employees.
But as recent legislative efforts in states such as New York and California make clear, the debate is evolving. Rather than simply pursuing the forcible reclassification of gig workers into full-time employees, the political left is seeking to accomplish the same end by different means. These regulatory attacks are likely to hurt not only companies but also the people progressives claim to be helping: gig workers themselves.
Starting with a state Supreme Court decision in 2018 — and followed by legislation known by its bill number, AB5 — California has led the way in the progressive fight against gig work, advancing a stringent version of the “ABC test” for worker classification. The ABC test has various facets, but the upshot is that it makes it significantly more difficult to classify workers as independent contractors.
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C. Jarrett Dieterle is a legal policy fellow for the Manhattan Institute.
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