Project 2025: Where All Workers Are Independent Contractors
And are thus not entitled to any worker protections, including benefits and overtime pay (Scroll to the end to listen)
To close out this week on the Christian Nationalist dogma embedded in Project 2025’s Department of Labor section, let’s revisit yesterday’s newsletter. Its Christian Nationalist Republican author, attorney Jonathan Berry, proposed forcing employers to pay every qualifying employee time and a half (overtime pay) for work on the Sabbath (defined in P2025 as Sunday.)
So how do businesses and millionaire and billionaire overlords get around this requirement? Yesterday, I joked that NFL team owners might try to get their businesses classified as churches.
But Berry gives every business an out: expanded classification of workers as independent contractors.
Project 2025, page 590
Protect flexible work options and worker independence (independent contractors). Roughly 60 million Americans across all income groups, ages, education levels, races, and household types participate in independent work, including full-time, part-time, or as a “side hustle.”…Independent workers, or contractors, are also critical to entrepreneurship and small-business growth and success…Businesses and workers currently must navigate many different definitions of who is and who is not an employee (or an independent contractor) based on federal and state employment, compensation, tort, tax, and pension laws. This complexity often leads to confusion, improper classification, and costly litigation. The Trump Administration finalized rules to provide clarity on which workers 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.
Most businesses have certain legal obligations to employees, but they do not have the same legal obligations to independent contractors. This is what Fascist Republicans and their billionaire overlords are really complaining about in Project 2025.
If a worker is classified as an employee, the IRS outlines myriad costs businesses must incur. They must contribute toward Social Security, Medicare, and federal and state unemployment taxes on the behalf of an employee. Employees are subject to workers’ compensation laws, such that if they are injured at work, the employer covers the cost of those injuries. If they have health insurance and/or retirement plans, they cannot exclude those employees from participating simply because they aren’t owners or CEOs.
Independents contractors must pay 100% of their own Social Security and Medicare. They have to provide their own health insurance and retirement. Independent contractors are typically compensated at a negotiated rate; they do not qualify for overtime pay, nor do they have coverage for on-the-job injuries under workers’ compensation. The only responsibility the employer has is: This contractor rendered me an invoice; when will I pay it?
The framers of Project 2025 are calling for a massive expansion of the term independent contractor. It also proposes to eliminate employee protections for franchise workers (page 591.) What could this mean for American workers?
More workers could become responsible for bearing the full cost of social security and medicare taxes (7.65% as an employee v. 15.3% as a contractor)
Workers would be subject to extra tax paperwork to report these earnings, as there would be no associated federal or state tax withholdings
Workers might need to contract their own business insurance, because their work would be classified as a business separate from their purported “employer”
Workers would be required to pay for their own benefits, like health insurance and retirement savings
Independent contractors have no job security. They can be terminated at any time, often without any notice
Berry also proposes longer periods for consideration of overtime pay, without factoring in his earlier call for all Sabbath work to be subject to overtime pay.
Project 2025, page 592
Congress should provide flexibility to employers and employees to calculate the overtime period over a longer number of weeks. Specifically, employers and employees should be able to set a two- or four-week period over which to calculate overtime. This would give workers greater flexibility to work more hours in one week and fewer hours in the next and would not require the employer to pay them more for that same total number of hours of work during the entire period.
This gobbeldy-gook essentially means employers can choose whatever pay period they want to determine overtime. For example, they could schedule workers for 70 hours one week and 10 the next to avoid paying them overtime for the two-week period. Or they could schedule them for 60 hours, 10 hours, 50 hours, and 20 hours over a month and avoid paying a cent of overtime.
Between forcing many American employees into independent contractor status and giving business owners the flexibility to define the overtime pay period, Project 2025 virtually eliminates overtime pay.
And employer tax withholding obligations.
And employer-paid benefits.
Leaving even more billions in profit to be distributed to CEO’s and shareholders without paying income taxes.
It seems to me that the underlying principle is atomization, that is, the attempt to ensure that there is no cohesion among co-workers. If each worker is bargaining in competition with each other worker and each looks only to his/her personal advantage then atomization is guaranteed. It's why people are encouraged not to compare wages and salaries. It's why companies hate unions.
Some industries are more prone to atomization than others. Translation, where umpteen translators are working on an ad hoc basis for umpteen companies, is a prime example. One would think that translators would have wanted to unify to improve the rates they were getting, but that was not the case. The system fostered an individualism that ended up to everyone’s detriment. As small companies were bought up by larger ones (financed by venture capital) and embraced machine translation as a way to maximize profits, translators were left with no means of defense.
I began to chronicle this process about 10 years ago when I was still doing commercial translation. Some of you might find it useful to think about (clicking will download a Word file).
http://www.kfkronenberg.com/Timeline_of_RWS_acquisitions.doc
A recent poll found that more than half of translators want to leave the field. That’s what happens to "independent contractors."
I am an independent contractor working in Anerican academia and it sucks. It's especially hard being chronically ill and disabled. No insurance. No sick time. I don't receive my first paycheck for months.