If you count yourself among the 58 million workers who work part time, then you should worry about Julie Su, President Joe Biden's nominee to take over the Department of Labor .
Before taking her current staff position at the department, Su served as secretary of California's Labor and Workforce Development Agency. In that position, she demonstrated extreme incompetence, presiding over the issue of more than $40 billion in fraudulent pandemic-era unemployment claims to criminals, cartels, and prison inmates. She kept disbursing the fraudulent checks even after being warned by the state auditor.
Even that incident is of little importance compared to her much greater offense. Su helped craft, defend, and advocate AB 5, a law that has been killing independent contracting in California and driving thousands of residents out of the state every year.
AB 5 was an attempt by California Democrats to tighten their regulatory death grip on businesses that hire contractors. It is a special interest law with which Democrats hoped to revive the fortunes of the state's dying labor unions. Independent contractors forced back into the traditional employee roles that most of them left on purpose could then be forced to join unions as a condition of having work as truckers in closed shops. So goes Democratic reasoning.
AB 5 has been a disaster. Contractors overwhelmingly prefer to work for themselves, surveys show. Nearly every class of self-employed worker in the state scrambled for a special exemption so they could continue working as freelancers.
Some contractors won exemptions due to their clout. Others, such as ride-sharing platforms Uber and Lyft, had the resources to put carveouts for participating drivers on the ballot so they could continue operating in the Golden State. Still others, such as freelance journalists (including those writing for left-wing outlets that promoted AB 5), had to languish without work for months before they could convince California Democrats to exempt them. They would be hard-pressed to explain why all freelancers shouldn't have the same protections.
Some, such as independent truckers, have not been so lucky . Dee Sova, a delivery driver formerly operating in California, wrote a heartbreaking op-ed for Fox News Online in which she lamented having to move to Missouri to keep her business on the road. This is all thanks to the law that Su, Biden's nominee, helped enforce, supposedly in the name of providing them benefits, which almost none of them ever got. It was a fraud and a sham to kowtow to the Democrats' favorite minority interest, Big Labor.
Sova's is just one of many such stories. Another California trucker, a 20-year veteran of the industry, explained to the trade publication Freight Waves being forced back into wage slavery by AB 5. "On a good day, I can make $1,200," he wrote in July. "But if I go to work for a company and they only pay me $25 an hour and also control the number of hours I can work, I can’t afford to feed my family." The trucker said he would have to sell his house and leave the state to make ends meet — as so many Californians do nowadays.
In case you think this only affects Californians, keep in mind that Biden has been supporting a national law, the PRO Act , which would wreak the same havoc on independent contractors nationally. The choice of Su to replace departing Labor Secretary Marty Walsh is a deliberate one that signals Biden's intention to wage war against independent business owners.
The rapid spread of internet jobs is not an accident. Independent contracting has become the future of employment in America in no small part because Democrats carelessly layered excessive rules and unnecessary expenses on the traditional employer-employee relationship that have nothing to do with workers' safety or fair compensation. Between that and the ability to perform most jobs from off site, this is the natural evolution of earning a living. Independent contracting helped millions survive the pandemic, and it continues to help nontraditional workers — stay-at-home parents, for example — earn extra income while still being present for their families.
Biden is now trying to take the team that has been destroying California's business environment and empower it at the national level. He might as well put Sam Brinton in charge of the Transportation Security Administration's luggage inspection division .
Senators have a responsibility, as part of their constitutional advise-and-consent role, to protect the nation's independent contractors from progressive Democrats' toxic anti-business depredations. They have a responsibility to reject Su's nomination and force Biden to appoint someone who, even if liberal, is competent and concerned with promoting the common good, not just special interests.
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