Kamala Harris Is Bad News for Gig Workers

T wo million independent contractors caught a break from the California supreme court when it recently upheld a ballot initiative that was intended to overcome Sacramento’s patently obvious effort to outlaw gig work. Any celebrations should wait, though. The administration wants to take California’s war on worker freedom national.

The PRO Act is not the federal identical twin of California’s Assembly Bill 5. But there is a striking similarity. AB 5 made it almost impossible to work as an independent contractor — it was a conscious intent to ensure that the only way to have a job in California would be as a hired employee. The PRO Act shares that same purpose.

Officially titled the Richard Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize Act — in honor of the late AFL-CIO president — the PRO Act has support in the White House, in the Naval Observatory (whose California occupant seems to have moved into the White House, and would sign the legislation if it were put before here), and from Julie Su, the acting labor secretary who, while she was California’s labor commissioner, threatened “investigations and audits” for companies that she felt weren’t in compliance with AB 5.

Rejected by the Senate during the previous Congress, the PRO Act was reintroduced in 2023. But after a year, the administration decided it couldn’t wait any longer, so it decided to regulate rather than legislate, finalizing in January a rule that revises the Labor Department’s “guidance on how to analyze who is an employee or independent contractor.”

This immediately drew a response. A joint resolution was introduced in both chambers challenging the rule under the Congressional Review Act. The resolution is unlikely to become law, but if it did, the Labor rule would “have no force or effect.”

Though framed as an overdue deliverance for besieged workers, AB 5 was a gift to labor bosses who dreamed of organizing California gig workers, especially ride-share drivers, and who lusted after the potential dues they could rake in. It was also one of the most-detested laws passed in California in memory. There was no grassroots movement behind AB 5, no uprising among freelancers. It was a top-down scheme fueled by union agitation and then, like so many other lousy public policies hatched in California, unleashed across the country.

AB 5’s impact was immediate — and ugly. Workers’ opportunities were narrowed. Many lost their incomes. Businesses faced higher labor costs, and entrepreneurs felt the chill of the dead hand of activist policy-making. The promise of the gig economy, expected to expand globally by roughly 123 percent over the next five years, turned bleak in California.

With their businesses in the balance, Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash generously funded a ballot initiative, Proposition 22, that would classify “drivers for app-based transportation (rideshare) and delivery companies as ‘independent contractors,’ not ‘employees.’” Voters approved it overwhelmingly. App-based drivers favored Prop. 22 — four out of five said they were “happy” that it passed, 76 percent said it “benefits me personally,” and 75 percent recommended that lawmakers pass “similar laws in other states so drivers across the country can benefit.”

The will of the electorate and the wishes of the drivers meant little to organized labor, though. In January 2021, the Service Employees International Union and four app-based drivers, out of more than 1.4 million statewide, sued, claiming that Prop. 22 was “invalid and unenforceable.” The California supreme court said they were wrong.

Freelancers asked for neither AB 5 nor the PRO Act — they are largely satisfied with their current arrangements. When the Bureau of Labor Statistics last surveyed independent contractors in 2017, it found that they “overwhelmingly favored their alternative employment arrangement (79 percent) to a traditional one (9 percent).”

More recent data show that, as a group, independent contractors are more optimistic about economic opportunity than employed workers are, their numbers as a portion of the labor force have increased by a third since 2016, and more than 85 percent “say the best days are ahead for freelancing.”

None of this is difficult to understand. Gig workers have more freedom than hired employees. They decide whom they work with and for and, as freelancers, are able to steer clear of disagreeable, long-term commitments. A freelance job can supplement income when necessary, provide a bridge between hired positions, and be a source of money for financial emergencies, loan payoffs, and down payments for large purchases.

These are the conditions that the unions and policy-makers behind AB 5 and the PRO Act want to “save” workers from. But then they can’t afford to be open about their real motives.