Representative Kevin Kiley (R-CA) introduced two bills—the Modern Worker Empowerment Act and the Modern Worker Security Act—that do nothing to empower or enhance the security of working people. Under these bills, far fewer working people will have federal minimum wage, overtime and child labor protections, and the right to take collective action with their coworkers and join a union. We strongly urge members of Congress to reject these bills and other attempts to roll back labor rights and protections for working people.
The Modern Worker Empowerment Act narrows access to bedrock wage and labor protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) by making it easier for employers to classify workers as independent contractors excluded from labor protections. The FLSA’s definition of employment is intentionally broad because Congress wanted FLSA’s protections to cover all people who work for someone else. The broad scope of the law has been well established through decades of case law and rulemaking by the Department of Labor that determines who is an independent contractor. The NLRA relies on the common law understanding of employment, which focuses on whether the hiring entity has the right to control the work.
The proposed definition of employment in the Modern Worker Empowerment Act—which focuses on whether an entity actually exercises significant control over the details of the way the work is performed—is much narrower than both definitions. It also raises more questions than it answers, such as what constitutes “significant” control.
The Modern Worker Security Act would exclude whether or not a business offers “portable benefits” from being considered as part of the analysis of whether workers are employees or independent contractors under federal law. This is unnecessary because there is nothing prohibiting corporations from offering benefits to independent contractors. What this bill does do is legitimize a corporate-driven model where savings accounts with meager contributions from corporations are touted as “portable benefits.”
Congress must reject these fake “portable benefits” proposals, and instead bolster our existing insurance-based portable benefits systems so more workers can access these programs, including app-based workers. Insurance-based portable benefits systems (unemployment insurance, Social Security Disability Insurance, and Medicare) and other insurance-based benefits (workers’ compensation and employer-provided health insurance) pool risk, providing funds that help working people weather emergencies—such as loss of employment or serious injury or illness—that would otherwise be financially catastrophic. Insurance-based benefits are especially critical to workers in occupations with significant health and safety risks such as app-based delivery workers, a group of workers with the highest fatality rate in 2023. Instead of rolling back labor protections and legitimizing a system where app-based workers must settle for paltry savings accounts instead of actual benefits, Congress must ensure all workers are covered by the same suite of full and meaningful benefits.
