I'll Go First

In the wake of horrific political violence, we should all be the change we want to see. In that spirit, I say this to America's union leaders. I ask them to join me and say the same.

The attempted assassination of former President Trump was frightening, appalling and unacceptable. As I posted immediately after learning the news, there is no place for violence. None. We are better than this, America.

Sadly, it took only minutes for people I know—not social-media idiots or TV talking heads, but people in my real life—to pick up where they’d left off. Venom and bile spewed out of them and onto my screen. All I could do was log off in disgust.

I spent yesterday the same way I imagine a lot of Americans did: trying to make sense of the senseless. My dog and I took a long walk on a park trail.

Lots of people were out bicycling and jogging. We all smiled and said “good morning” as we passed in opposite directions. We knew nothing of one another’s politics. It was sunny and warm and delightful.

As I walked, I thought about what I could do, for my own part, to try and be the change we all would like to see.

By the time I got back home, I had decided that I would go first—and then invite others to have the decency to join me.

My Side’s Part

The independent-contractor policy issue is awash in the same kind of divisive, dismissive and hate-filled rhetoric that we see in politics today. Yes, it’s coming from both sides as we battle over whether Americans should be able to keep our right to choose self-employment.

I have tried my best not to descend into the name-calling cesspool. I’ve attempted to use positive language. When I testified before Congress last year, speaking as a co-founder of Fight For Freelancers, here’s what I said:

Our members have voted for everybody from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump. All of our co-founders, and about 80 percent of our members, are women. Our members include senior citizens, Generation Z, people of color, people with disabilities, union supporters and just about every other demographic you can imagine. All of us are united on this issue.

But alas, I am also human. I’ve certainly engaged in Twitter/X wars that were not exactly models for a Lincoln-Douglas debate.

On more than one day, I have said—privately, if not publicly—that the union bosses trying to outlaw careers like mine are a bunch of greedy, power-hungry bullies. I’ve heard more than a few independent contractors say the same.

The truth is that after years of having to defend our right to be our own bosses from these union leaders and the lawmakers they support, quite a lot of us are past the point of feeling angry. There are days when we feel hate toward the people we believe are unfairly attacking us.

Yes. Hate.

So, we have to acknowledge that.

I’m owning it today. And I’m saying that I will try to remember we have a policy disagreement. We are opponents, not enemies. Opponents should treat each other with respect.

Which Is It? Russian Operative or Nazi?

Unionists on the other side of this issue should commit right now to doing the same thing.

Thus far, they have demonstrated no desire or ability to treat us as equals. The freelance-busting brigade describes independent contractors in one of two ways:

• as victims who need unions to protect us from our own bad choices;

• and as a threat to society that must be stopped.

To the first point, I’ve written extensively about language that denigrates us as victims. This language routinely shows up in the press and in the laundry list of questions that lawmakers such as U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, a Democrat from Virginia, repeat to falsely characterize us.

This language is rooted in the notion that we independent contractors are not simply different from, but are instead less than unionizable employees.

It is not the language of equality or respect.

We have seen lawmakers go on television to dismiss and denigrate us. Perhaps the most vivid example was when California Teamster-turned-Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, who sponsored the freelance-busting Assembly Bill 5, went on KUSI News in San Diego and had this exchange with a news anchor:

News anchor: “We want to ask, what do you have to say to those freelance journalists, those independent contractors, who were working and have now lost their jobs because of AB5, your bill?”

Gonzalez: “First of all, it wasn’t a job. These aren’t jobs. These are freelance positions that may be three hours a month and it may be three hundred hours a month.”

News anchor: “It was how they were supporting themselves.”

Watch for yourself. See if you think Gonzalez feels that the independent contractors are her equals, worthy of any consideration whatsoever:

Similarly, where I live in New Jersey, I’ve been forced to tangle with then-Senate President Steve Sweeney.

Like Gonzalez, Sweeney is a unionist Democrat. He was upset that independent contractors including me wrote newspaper op-eds to expose the damage his freelance-busting AB5 copycat bill would do to our careers.

Instead of addressing our very real concerns about losing our livelihoods, Sweeney also took to the media. He smeared us in the Asbury Park Press, saying we were akin to Russian operatives interfering in America’s elections:

I wrote that Washington Post op-ed in 2019. It remains accurate today. (And thankfully, Sweeney has since been voted out of office.)

At the federal level, we all watched the highest-ranking Democrat in the U.S. Senate, Chuck Schumer of New York, say that he plans to push through the PRO Act, which uses California’s freelance-busting bill as a freelance-busting model for the nation.

Make sure you view the comments as he’s speaking—they’re filled with angry freelancers saying we do not want what he’s promising to inflict on us.

Speaking before the North America’s Building Trades Unions, Senator Schumer made clear his real intent: to create a federal government not by, of and for all the people including us independent contractors, but instead exclusively by, of and for the unions.

We have also watched Senator Schumer suggest that if the 90% of us who are not unionized employees attempt to challenge such blatant cronyism in the courts, his handpicked U.S. Supreme Court justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, will stand with him and the freelance-busting brigade:

Senator Schumer is not alone. We have also watched President Biden and Vice President Harris cheer this freelance busting.

The career-killing ABC Test from California is now a policy promise written into the Democratic Party platform.

This kind of one-sided policymaking and divisive rhetoric from our leaders is bad enough on its own. But it has also stirred some real ugliness in the populace toward those of us who choose to earn a living as independent contractors.

This is a communications associate for the NewsGuild of New York—which represents The Atlantic, Conde Nast, NBC News and The New York Times, among others—describing this past January how she feels about non-unionized Americans:

Suggesting that any group of people are a “social issue” in need of immediate resolution is heinous, hate-based language.

We have seen the language of prejudice from so-called labor expert Terri Gerstein of New York University, using Twitter/X to promote a column she wrote in The New York Times saying that the growing number of independent contractors is “bad for everyone.” Her series of tweets suggests that we are sickly. We’re a threat to your food safety. You should fear us. Hide your elderly, your kids from us:

And even that’s not the worst of it. Less than three months ago, Chrissy Lynch, head of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, told The Boston Globe what she thinks about those of us who earn a living through the independent-contractor business model:

“I see this as an existential threat not just to the labor movement but to society.”

You read that correctly. An existential threat to society.

Where have we heard that kind of language before?

Oh, yes, from the people who call Donald Trump an existential threat to society. And compare him to Adolf Hitler.

Both before and after the gunfire.

The Nazi comparison has also happened to me as part of the independent-contractor policy debate. Here are some tweets from Susan Blubaugh, a campaign insider for my then-congressman, Democrat Tom Malinowski. I privately and publicly urged Representative Malinowski to actually represent me as his constituent, and to remove the career-killing regulatory language from the PRO Act—a perfectly reasonable request for a constituent to make.

Representative Malinowski ignored my request, so I kept tweeting at him, not willing to have my career destroyed.

Blubaugh, in turn, stirred up online hate speech toward me so intensely that she ultimately compared me to a Nazi:

I brought all of these tweets to Representative Malinowski’s attention on Twitter/X. He did not even bother to reply. (Thankfully, he too has since been voted out of office.)

Suffice it to say, the “us vs. them” attitude is very much a part of the independent-contractor policy debate—and the vast majority of the hate speech is coming from our opponents.

If the events of the past few days have taught us all anything, this is not going to end well.

Let’s Agree On This

In the interest of trying to be the kind of change I want to see, I’m not only pledging on this day to try and do better, to more carefully monitor my own words, and to treat my opponents on this policy issue with respect.

I’m also saying this—and I am asking every union leader in the United States to say the same thing publicly, as a show of mutual respect in this time of perilous national divide:

Unionized employees and independent contractors are equals as Americans. We have the right to choose how we earn a living. Everyone should respect us and our rights.

Liz Shuler of the AFL-CIO, Sean O’Brien of the Teamsters, and April Verrett of the SEIU: Will you acknowledge that unionized employees and independent contractors are all equals entitled to our choices as Americans?

It would also be nice to hear these words from President Biden, Vice President Harris, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, U.S. Representative Bobby Scott, former U.S. Representative Tom Malinowski, Lorena Gonzalez and Steve Sweeney.

I’m trying to be the change that I want to see.

Will you rise to the occasion and join me?