This past week, we celebrated Labor Day, which was intended to be a celebration of the American worker. However, the current Biden-Harris administration has made the day a celebration of union leadership. What the current progressive leadership fails to remember is that the freedom of hardworking Americans to choose a meaningful career is what will rebuild our economy. Top-down control from the Biden-Harris administration is crippling our workforce and limiting choice—which, in turn, hinders economic progress.
Union leaders have backed the Biden-Harris endorsed “PRO Act”, which stifles economic growth. Americans for Prosperity’s own Ilana Blumsack shared, “Even before learning of a major reduction in job estimates over the past year (over 800,000 fewer jobs added), Americans have had persistently low confidence in their economic futures. This is due to continuing inflation, but also a range of harmful new regulatory policies, including those in the labor space. Regulations undermine self-employment, workplace flexibility, and small business entrepreneurship while favoring unionization and larger businesses that can better comply with the increasing red tape.
“The Biden-Harris administration has increasingly tried to apply dated labor laws from the early 20th century to our dynamic 21st-century economy, with damaging effects. This has a lot to do with low American confidence in the economy and millions of job openings.”
The payoff, of course, is that union leadership gets to create legislation that further prohibits or stifles those not paying into Biden-Harris agenda. This is done primarily through regulations and legislation that causes so much red tape, only those with the financial backing can navigate through the artificially slanted playing field.
Whether you are working a 9-to-5 job at a big company, freelancing in a creative field, as an independent contractor in construction, or starting your own business, you should be free to pursue your career on your own terms. But right now, government regulations are making that harder. There’s a lot of red tape out there tying us down, making it tough to work where and how we want. Instead of helping us, the government is often getting in the way.
Here’s the secret that the Biden-Harris administration doesn’t want you to know:
Nearly 36% of working Americans identified as independent workers, up from 27% in 2016-17. That’s over 64 million people — more than the populations of Texas and Florida combined. In 2020, self-employed workers had nearly 31 million employees on their payrolls, according to the Pew Research Center. Finally, most independent workers wouldn’t trade their freedom for a traditional job. In fact, 80% of independent contractors prefer self-employment over traditional employment. 65% of self-employed Americans feel fulfilled by their work, compared to 47% of those in traditional jobs.
Unfortunately, restrictive policies such as ABC Test, which many states use to define if a worker is a contractor or an employee, hinder opportunities to independent work. In a nutshell, this policy assumes all workers are traditional employees, forcing workers to meet extremely strict criteria to classify as independent contractors.
Plenty of other regulations keep people from reaching their full potential.1 in 5 Americans need a government occupational license to do their jobs—and these licenses come with a price tag. In fact, they cost the economy 1.8 million jobs and billions of dollars every year.
The final days of summer are behind us, and Labor Day has come and gone. Now, with the remainder of this Congress, we ask Senator Bob Casey to act with urgency to put a stop to dangerous labor policy such as the PRO Act and unleash economic prosperity through worker freedom. Head to ProsperityIsPossible.com to learn more.
This is Emily Greene, State Director with Americans for Prosperity Pennsylvania.