Bad news!
"... Today [1/10/2024], the Department of Labor (DOL) published its final “independent contractor rule,” which will result in the reclassification of millions of gig workers as “employees” under federal law. Unfortunately, the rule means continued uncertainty for gig workers, more lawsuits, and additional costs on self-employed workers and small businesses. Indeed, the DOL admits that its rule, which will take effect on March 11, 2024, will impact millions of workers and result in hundreds of millions of dollars in regulatory costs across the U.S. economy. ...
Proposed some fifteen months ago in the fall of 2022, the new rule replaces a Trump-era rule—which Biden’s DOL illegally tried to block in 2021—that clarified the “core” characteristics of independent contractors. Today’s rule rejects those “core” identifiers and instead lists an indefinite number of vague factors that will allow bureaucrats, unions, and other Biden allies to classify virtually any worker they want as an “employee,” forcing independent contractors out of the workforce and reducing choices for workers and consumers. ...
Showing its institutional bias, the DOL favorably cited comments from powerful unions dozens of times throughout its publication, illustrating that the rule was changed at the behest of entrenched union bosses threatened by the innovation of the gig economy.
The rule also violates federalism principles by undercutting many state laws protecting independent contractors, including a 2016 reform the Goldwater Institute supported in Arizona to ensure workers who want to be independent contractors don’t have to jump through bureaucratic hoops to be recognized as such. ..."
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