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Calamity Joe Targets the Gig Economy

Posted on Friday, October 21, 2022
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by Outside Contributor
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Economy

America’s gig economy represents a rare unalloyed success story from the tumultuous past decade.  It brought a new universe of opportunities for workers, consumers and businesses, and accounted for $1.3 trillion of the U.S. economy even before COVID.  

Naturally, that attracts the menacing gaze of the Biden Administration, which seeks to reorder it in trademark Biden fashion.  

Undeterred by its failures regarding inflation, gas prices, domestic energy production, Afghanistan, a military recruitment crisis spawned by its woke agenda, crime and even a persistent baby formula scarcity eight months after that crisis emerged, the Biden Administration now directs its calamitous brand of intervention toward this American success story.  

Specifically, Biden’s Department of Labor just proposed a new rule reclassifying tens of millions of gig workers, involuntarily, as formal employees, which would deprive them of the autonomy that draws them to gig work in the first place. 

Currently, gig workers enjoy the freedom to set their own hours, work when and where most convenient for themselves and their families, choose their own prices, accept or decline work based upon safety priorities, work simultaneously for different and even competing companies in the same field and other advantages.  Gig work can also prove invaluable for unemployed Americans while they seek full-time employment in other fields, or provide supplemental income for people whose professions offer irregular earnings such as musicians, artists or parents who must maintain flexible work schedules.  

The gig economy also offers American consumers advantages unavailable until recent years, such as rideshare services like Uber or Lyft, or quick delivery services like DoorDash.  

So why would the Biden Administration risk the ire of tens of millions of workers, consumers and businesses by upending the thriving gig economy?  

Because Big Labor overlords want it.  

Under federal labor and antitrust laws, independent contractors cannot be unionized, or their earnings confiscated for union political activities.  That’s a problem for union leaders and the leftist politicians who depend upon their support, with the Labor Department announcing that private-sector union membership fell to a historic low of 6.1% last year, from its 1954 peak of 34.8%:  

In 2021, the number of wage and salary workers belonging to unions continued to decline (-241,000) to 14.0 million, and the percent who were members of unions – the union membership rate – was 10.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.  The rate is down from 10.8 percent in 2020 – when the rate increased due to a disproportionately large decline in the total number of nonunion workers compared with the decline in the number of union members…  The union membership rate of public-sector workers (33.9 percent) continued to be more than five times higher than the rate of private-sector workers (6.1 percent).  

Consequently, union bosses desperately seek to reverse membership declines and boost revenues to subsidize political activities and maintain union leaders’ high salaries.  

Consumers and gig workers, of course, would end up paying the price.  

For millions of gig workers, it would end their flexibility to set their own hours and other working decisions that draw them to the work.  Instead, employers and union collective bargaining agreements would make those decisions for them, with one-size-fits-all replacing flexibility and free choice.  

It’s important to highlight that gig workers overwhelmingly prefer current standards.  According to one survey, 86% of Uber drivers choose gig work for its scheduling flexibility, 66% opt to work for multiple competing companies, 75% prefer the flexibility to choose their benefits even at the expense of higher pay (as opposed to a one-size-fits-all benefits model typically imposed by union contracts), and only one-quarter wish to work full-time.  Workers prefer choice and flexibility, not rigid employment structures or strict union workplace rules.   

As for consumers already struggling amid high inflation, prices would rise even further.  According to Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, for example, the Biden Administration’s proposed rule could increase companies’ labor costs by 15% to 30%.  “It would be a major albatross,” Mr. Ives said, “that would turn their business models upside-down.”  

Notably, this constitutes the Biden Administration’s second bite at this apple.  It attempted to impose this reclassification rule during the opening weeks of its tenure, but a federal judge overturned their attempt.  Additionally, California imposed a similar rule back in 2019, but even that state’s deep-blue electorate voted to overturn it in a 2020 ballot initiative.  The Biden Administration will simply not be deterred from its desperate, politically motivated pandering.  

In this era of increasing flexibility and evolving needs, the gig economy allows workers a wide array of earning opportunities while achieving a more desirable work/life balance, and it brings consumers benefits scarcely imaginable even a decade ago.  

In contrast, the Biden Administration has managed to bungle every agenda item that it has pursued.  Americans should be outraged and not allow it to add an increasingly critical gig economy to that list.  

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Boz
Boz
2 years ago

All intentional. The Puppet Biden is being run by Jarrett, 0bama, Rice and others with the intent of bringing America to her knees.

Stephen Russell
Stephen Russell
2 years ago

DONT we need this gig economy Now

Patriot Will
Patriot Will
2 years ago

Biden and his cohorts are addicted to making things that are good more dysfunctional. They are threatened when they can’t control things, because if the word gets out that many things would be much more functional without government intervention, then an increasing number of people would start noticing that Biden does more to stink things up than actually make things better. Increasingly, even apathetic citizens would start voting against the Marxist Democrat candidates. This just wouldn’t do, because in Biden’s fantasy land those who don’t support him are often systemically racist and potential terrorists.

Max
Max
2 years ago

Here we go again with the Biden and his handlers destroying another great economic adventure for their benefit of the continuing their destruction of the nation.

PaulE
PaulE
2 years ago

The rationale behind this policy from Team Biden is rather simply and Biden’s Labor Secretary Marty Walsh has dropped multiple bread crumbs over the last few weeks spelling it out. The idea is as follows:

1) By re-classifying gig workers from independent contractors to employees, the objective is ultimately force / cajole these workers to join a union. The SEIU is one of the primary, major Democrat contributors likely to benefit. Thus more union members paying union dues, that are then re-directed to the election of Democrat candidates. In short, this new policy is meant to feed the Democrat campaign money machine, as well as potentially gain some Democrat voters along the way through union intimidation to its members to vote Democrat.

2) This re-classification policy will significantly raise costs to all employers, both big and small. The larger companies will be able to pass on these increased labor costs to the consumer in the form of higher prices. Thus fueling further inflationary pressures on the economy. This policy will hurt smaller employers and lead them to either cut personnel, reduce service or simply close up shop altogether. Thus reducing market competition and ultimately raising prices to the end consumer, which of course means more inflationary pressures on the economy.

3) People making a liviing on the current gig economy will find they have less control over their work schedules and general work conditions. As employees, they will be expected to work regular schedules that suit the employer, not themselves. Yes, they may make a salary, but they will find that the union dues and other costs associated with being an employee rather than a independent contractor may very well leave them losing money on the whole deal.

Team Biden only cares about Item 1, as it is what would personally benefit the Democrat Party. The other two items are of no concern to Democrats, as they are not personally impacted by either item. The damage to individual businesses and people, as well as the overall economy is of no real concern to either Team Biden or the Democrat Party. Once you understand all this, you will understand why this and various other policies have been implemented over the last 20 months.

David Millikan
David Millikan
2 years ago

What do you expect when you have an FASCIST DICTATOR sitting ILLEGALLY and UNCONSTITUTIONALLY in
OUR WHITE HOUSE that is COMPLETELY UnAMERICAN?
ANYTHING and SUCCESSFUL that’s AMERICAN the DICTATOR Beijing biden has to DESTROY or his COMMUNIST CHINA buddies won’t protect him.
Just look in your wallet. See any money left?

James P.
James P.
2 years ago

Everything the commie/socialist/Democrat scumbags touch, they destroy.

George Gallman
George Gallman
2 years ago

Acting president Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. can Afgan everything he touches.

Chris
Chris
2 years ago

People, if you will read the UN Agenda 2030,(used to be called Agenda 21), you will see that EVERYTHING is going according to plan. (At UN.org) And, if you will read ‘Rules for Radicals’, in it the authors state that to change a society you must crash it, dismantle it. That is what our current chaos is all about. I wish people would stop saying that Biden is just an old bungler. He and “They” are working exactly according to the plan. They have run into one problem. The COVID (man made) virus and the (synthetic)
“vaccine “ have not killed nearly as many as they wanted so there will have to be another, more lethal, bug, with a more lethal shot, so stay tuned. If you say why are “they” doing all this – read Agenda 2030. The “end game” of all of this is the “re-wilding” of America and the earth. There is to be no more than 500 million people on the earth. (There are currently in the neighborhood of 333 Billion people on earth). Read it. I read it over 10 years ago and nearly had a heart attack. All is going exactly according to plan.
What are we going to do about it?
One good thing – ESG is being pushed back against. If you don’t know what ESG is read up on it. You won’t like it but you need to understand it because it is about to effect Everything. And understand that digital money is coming and MUST be rejected. Digital money will allow the radical Feds to control your entire financial life, including everything you buy, including food. Use cash as much as possible. Use credit/debt cards as little as possible. Pass the word. Let friends and family know that they are about to loose cash.
READ. However, do NOT use Google or Yahoo to do research.

Media microphones are stretched out awaiting President Donald J. Trump as he disembarks Marine One Sunday evening, March 24, 2019, to the South Lawn of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian)
A pensioner sums up his money on a calculator. Hand of an old woman and a calculator close-up. An elderly woman considers the amount of money on a calculator.
stephen moore on BFA

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