Voters Support Holding Corporations Accountable for Labor Contracting Abuses

Recent polling confirms that voters who live in battleground districts overwhelmingly want their Congressional representatives to hold corporations accountable to the workers who build their business and their wealth. Voters want legislators to make it harder for companies to call workers “independent contractors”; they want lawmakers to discourage companies from contracting with temp and staffing agencies and shedding responsibility for their workers.

Between January 22 and February 1, 2021, Hart Research Associates polled voters in the nation’s 67 most competitive Congressional districts. Across political parties, regions, race, genders, age groups, education levels, and income levels, there is broad understanding that policymakers should address the rampant contracting out of jobs.

Fully 72% of voters are in favor of passing legislation that would “allow workers to hold lead companies legally responsible if their subcontractor fails to make Social Security, unemployment insurance, or workers’ compensation contributions, or fails to pay workers the wages they are owed according to prevailing minimum wage and overtime laws.” Both white voters (73%) and people of color (70%) support such legislation. Democrats especially favor such legislation (83% support), but both Independents (60%) and Republicans (66%) also endorse legislative action.

Seven in ten voters (70%) believe that eliminating permanent jobs and instead using workers from temporary or staffing agencies is a bad change in the workplace, with a third of voters regarding this as a very bad change.

And by a dramatic 40-point margin, 54% to 14%, voters think that businesses designating more workers as independent contractors, instead of hiring them as employees, is a bad change rather than a good change for the workplace. A strong majority (68%) of battleground voters favors legislation that would make it harder for companies to classify workers as independent contractors, including increasing the fees and penalties for companies that misclassify employees as independent contractors. Seventy-six percent of voters of color supported the new legislation; 66% of white voters also favored it, as did 79% of Biden voters and 58% of Trump voters.

NELP’s prior research shows that Black, Latinx, Asian/Pacific Islander, and Native American workers are overrepresented in misclassification-prone sectors, such as construction, trucking, delivery, home care, agricultural, personal care, ride-hail, and janitorial and building services, by over 36 percent; they constitute just over a third of workers overall, but between 55 and 86 percent of workers in home care, agricultural, personal care, and janitorial sectors.[1]

NELP’s results come on the heels of polling by McKinsey that finds that contract, freelance, and temporary workers would overwhelmingly prefer to have permanent employment. In particular, people of color stated a strong preference for stable jobs. Together, the two polls make clear that excluding certain workers from labor protections—exclusions that are rooted in white supremacy and segregation—has profound implications for racial justice.

The poll results make clear that lawmakers should resist efforts by Uber, Lyft, Doordash, Instacart, and others to gain special exemptions from foundational labor rights, both across the states and in intense lobbying to gain special exemptions from federal legislation known as the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act—which, if passed, would be the most consequential expansion of the right to organize that workers have seen in decades. These businesses and others that make up the misleadingly named “Coalition for Workforce Innovation” are attempting to convince lawmakers that workers prefer being relegated to second-class status. The polling data shows that these claims are false.

…people across the country are demanding that their elected representatives ensure that foundational labor rights apply to all people who work for a living, and that foundational obligations apply to businesses that contract out.

Instead, people across the country are demanding that their elected representatives ensure that foundational labor rights apply to all people who work for a living, and that foundational obligations apply to businesses that contract out. NELP applauds efforts by the Biden administration, Congressmembers, and policymakers in states and cities who are working towards this goal.

Endnotes

[1] NELP analysis of 2020 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement microdata.