Recent News
Mackinac Center Senior Fellow Vincent Vernuccio was about to go on national television when the 2018 Supreme Court decision in Janus v. AFSCME came down. He quickly texted a group of labor experts, including Austen Bannan, Americans for Prosperity’s senior employment policy analyst. “Does this mean what I think it means?” Vernuccio asked. In the […]
Americans for Prosperity Senior Policy Analyst Austen Bannan provides commentary on a proposed Department of Labor rule that would make it more difficult for union workers to know how their dues and fees are being spent. In a move that would reduce union transparency for union members, government, and the public broadly, the Department of […]
This article was guest authored by Karen Anderson, the founder and administrator of Freelancers Against AB5. Anderson spoke with several independent contractors, freelancers, and gig workers to hear how their businesses have struggled in the wake of AB 5, a likely outcome for independent workers nationwide if the PRO Act becomes law. It’s been more […]
Jaime Gravitt comes from a long line of entrepreneurs and independent contractors. Her great-grandmother came to the United States from Italy and started her own restaurant. Her maternal grandparents, she says in a new video for Americans for Prosperity’s Flex Your Independence campaign, “never worked for anybody a day in their lives.” They were prolific […]
The U.S. Department of Labor published a final rule May 6 to withdraw a Trump-era rule under the Fair Labor Standards Act that gave critical protections to America’s independent contractors. The Biden DOL argued that, among other reasons, the rule “was in tension with the FLSA’s text and purpose, as well as relevant judicial precedent.” […]
How would the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, also called the PRO Act, affect independent contractors, including gig workers and freelancers, across the country? Would it help them, as supporters of the bill claim — or would it end up costing many of them their livelihoods? Thomas Bingham, a senior grassroots trainer with Grassroots […]
Gabriella Hoffman loves the outdoors. In her work as a freelance writer and media strategist, she helps advance political freedom, and she feels the most free when her work takes her outside to cover conservation, hunting, and fishing. Hoffman started her career in Washington, D.C., working a traditional 9-to-5 job that kept her mostly indoors. […]
The Protecting the Right to Organize Act, now awaiting consideration in the Senate, would upend the livelihoods of countless independent contractors, freelancers, and gig workers across the country. The bill’s ABC test would allow the National Labor Relations Board to penalize businesses for hiring independent contractors. Then, PRO Act supporters hope, those businesses would hire […]
Karen Anderson is the founder of Freelancers Against AB5, the California law that has cost hundreds of thousands of independent contractors their livelihoods. In the Orange County Register, she writes that, “with House passage of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, the nation veered one step closer to replicating the federal equivalent of California’s […]
