When you think about who is going to be hit the hardest by pollution, whether it’s conventional air water and soil pollution or climate change, it is very often low-income communities and communities of color. The undercutting of these kinds of protections is going to have a disproportionate impact on these very same communities.
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Department of Labor and Related Agencies
qualify as an independent contractor or employee under the FLSA and NLRA. The Biden Administration is replacing those rules with vague and expansive definitions that would add uncertainty, increase costs, and reduce options for Americans who want to work independently.
• NLRB and DOL should return to their 2019 and 2021 independent contractor rules that provided much-needed clarity for workers and employers.
• Congress should establish a bright-line test—based on the level of control an individual exercises over his or her work—to determine whether a payee is an employee or an independent contractor, across all relevant laws. This would prevent continued uncertainty as well as provide continuity across federal laws.
• Congress should provide a safe harbor from employer-employee status for companies that offer independent workers access to earned benefits. Doing so would increase access among independent contractors to traditional pooled workplace benefits such as health care and retirement savings accounts.
Protect Small Businesses and Entrepreneurship (Joint Employer). Millions of businesses across America engage in mutually beneficial affiliation arrangements with other businesses. These arrangements include janitorial services, staffing firms, construction contractors and subcontractors, technology support services, and many other vendor and contracting services. They also include the nearly 775,000 independently owned franchise businesses, which employ 8.2 million workers across the United States. The franchise structure offers a proven business model for individuals who want to own and operate their own small business. An Obama-era regulation changed the definition of a joint employer to make corporate franchisors jointly liable for employees of individual franchisee owners, even without the franchisor exercising any direct control over those employees. The Biden Administration is advancing an even more expansive definition of a joint employer that would upend the franchise business model, taking away ownership and income opportunities from small-business entrepreneurs, costing jobs, and raising prices.
• DOL and NLBB should return to the long-standing approach to defining joint employers based on direct and immediate control.
• Congress should enact the Save Local Business Act, which would
codify the long-standing definition that has existed outside the Obama-era and Biden-proposed rules.