On Thursday, July 17, 2025, I joined a panel of experts to testify before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee to discuss portable benefits.
Led by Chairman Dr. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), conservatives focused on the practical implications of allowing for portable benefits. However, in what felt like a completely different hearing, liberals focused on peddling falsehoods about the Medicaid reforms in the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act and pushing for pension-for-all.
Dr. Cassidy set the table with his opening remarks:
Our nearly one hundred-year-old labor laws prevent independent contractors from receiving workplace benefits if they choose the flexibility of independent work. We’ve heard from companies that want to give benefits to their contractors, but don’t out of fear of misclassification lawsuits.
Last week, I joined Republican colleagues, Senator Paul and Senator Scott, in releasing a legislative package that modernizes federal law to give the power back to workers.
Our pro-worker package establishes a safe harbor, so that a worker can keep their independent status while unlocking benefits for themselves and their families.
It strengthens workers’ flexibility, making it clear what legally constitutes an independent contractor. The package also increases workers’ access to health care and retirement accounts, like solo 401ks, that are already available under federal law.
This opening cleared the way for me to discuss in my testimony the independent workforce, why flexibility is critical to their labor force participation, and their healthcare needs.
No worker should be forced into a traditional 9-to-5 job.
Freelancing and self-employment are long-standing work arrangements of the U.S. workforce. In 2023, an estimated 70 million people freelanced, nearly half are women.
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Flexibility is their driving force. Raising children, caregiving for aging parents, and managing their own health issues. Others find independent contracting as an entry point into entrepreneurship.
9 out of 10 female workers who shifted from full-time employment to independent contract work did so to prioritize flexibility.
I debunked why reclassifying employees is the wrong approach:
Mass Reclassification is the Wrong Solution to this Problem.
Expanding healthcare benefits to independent contractors by forcing them to be reclassified as employees is an ill-advised approach that undermines workers’ choices, freedoms, and labor attachment.
The Protecting the Right to Organize Act utilizes a stringent ABC test, while the Department of Labor’s independent contractor rule, finalized in 2023, uses a multifactor test. Both approaches would effectively reclassify millions of independent workers against their wills.
Then, I explained why portable benefits are the right solution and enjoy wide support.
Portable Benefits are The Right Way to Expand Benefits While Respecting Independent Worker Status.
Portable benefits are attached to a worker instead of a specific employer. Workers can access a variety of benefits—healthcare, disability, paid time off, etc.—and maintain coverage no matter their classification and clients.
Because federal law prohibits companies from offering benefits to their independent contractor workforce, a safe harbor in federal and state laws and regulations is needed. This would prevent their reclassification as employees.
Kim Kavin, journalist, co-founder of Fight for Freelancers, and editor of the thoughtful Freelance Busting Substack, came next. She provided a moving personal story and details about statewide efforts to force the reclassification of independent contractors:
I’m from New Jersey. My parents were public schoolteachers, and I grew up in a proud union household. I earned a journalism degree from the University of Missouri, and I had staff jobs at newspapers and magazines until I was about 30. That’s when I realized some freelancers were earning more than I was. It’s one reason I chose to go freelance 22 years ago.
Now, I’m 53. Freelancing is one of my best life choices.
Her plea was against reclassification efforts like AB in California or those in her home state of New Jersey. Instead, she noted:
A commonsense solution to this problem would be government officials actually inviting independent contractors to participate in independent-contractor policymaking…
There is an enormous difference between policymaking that stops the misclassification of employees and policymaking that hurts entrepreneurial Americans who wish to be their own bosses. Things have gone horribly awry when policymaking threatens the livelihoods of the vast majority of independent contractors who prefer self-employment.
Meanwhile, Senator Bernie Sanders, the ranking member on the committee, attempted to hijack the hearing to roll out his pensions-for-all plan. His opening remarks harkened to a press statement released earlier that day:
We can no longer tolerate a rigged retirement system that allows the CEOs of large corporations to receive massive golden parachutes for themselves, while denying workers a pension after a lifetime of work. If we are serious about addressing the retirement crisis in America, corporations must be required to offer all of their workers a traditional pension plan that guarantees a monthly income in retirement. And if corporations refuse to offer a decent retirement plan, their workers must be allowed to receive the same type of pension that every member of Congress receives. If we can guarantee a defined benefit pension plan for members of Congress, we can and we must provide that same level of retirement security to every worker in America.
Without even tackling the problems with a nationalized pension plan, the willful disregard for the actual subject of the hearing underscored the left’s disregard for independent contracting.
For the left, full employment through union jobs is the gold standard of work, and everything else needs to fit that mold.
There’s a misplaced view that most, if not all, independent contractors should be forced to become employees regardless of whether they desire to be employed—and 80% say they don’t want to be—or have circumstances that would even allow them to get a traditional 9-to-5 job.
This is the way to combat rampant misclassification of workers and to expand benefits to flexible workers. One of the other minority witnesses, Timothy J. Driscoll, who is the president of the
International Union of Bricklayers & Allied Craftworkers explained this sentiment in blasting the federal portable benefits bill introduced by Chairman Cassidy:
The “Unlocking Benefits for Independent Workers Act” would only accelerate this insidious race to the bottom by providing such unscrupulous employers a “safe harbor” under all federal laws when such companies provide any benefit or protection commonly provided to full-time employees. This unseemly expansion of independent contractor status would leave such workers without the basic protections of the Fair Labor Standards Act and would make next to impossible their ability exercise their right to form unions or bargain collectively under the National Labor Relations Act. As currently written this legislation is an extreme departure from the benefits and protections that workers have relied upon and is a thinly veiled attempt to weaken the rights of workers to join unions, be paid fair wages, and have safe working conditions.
The bottom line for opponents of flexible work and independent contracting is that these workers can’t be unionized. However, ill-advised bills such as the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which Mr. Discoll advocated for, would force flexible workers, including millions of women, into traditional 9-to-5 jobs and turn those employees into potential union members:
… the PRO Act guarantees bargaining rights for employees who are misclassified as independent contractors and establishes a process for helping newly organized workers achieve a first contract.
We are encouraged that despite the efforts of the left to push for mass reclassification of workers, energy and momentum are for the protection of flexibility. As I mentioned,
The Unlocking Benefits for Independent Workers Act and, similarly, the Modern Worker Security Act would create a safe harbor in federal law, thereby clearing the way for portable benefits plans nationwide.
The Modern Worker Empowerment Act would provide a clear and predictable test to determine worker classification under federal labor law.
We hope the Senate and House can work together to unlock benefits for independent workers while protecting their independent status.