Last week, Kansas lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to pass a law defending biological sex, overriding a veto from Gov. Laura Kelly (D-KS). Naturally, the law has gender ideologues in a panic. The Human Rights Campaign issued a statement accusing Republicans of intentionally endangering the lives of “transgender” youth, and activists pretending to be journalists at the Kansas City Star derided the Independent Women’s Forum, an organization of which I am a part, as a “national anti-trans group” because we dared to support it.
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, Pool
California Labor Secretary Julie Su should not be running an ice cream truck, let alone be a Deputy Secretary of Labor. She allowed 30 billion of fraud to happen on her watch, and was part of the misinformation campaign with the State’s Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program which costs thousands of unemployed contractors from benefiting from it. We cannot say the same for convicted felons, who benefited richly.
Su is also the enforcement arm for the AB5 law, targeting independent contractors and small businesses for audits and fines that are destroying their ability to live and work.
(Martin Clarke/Michelle Janikian via AP)
It has been a little over a year since I started my fight against California’s AB5: the so-called “Gig Workers” law that was supposed to right the wrongs of misclassification of 1099 Independent Contractors who should have been employees.
Authored by San Diego Assemblywoman Lorena S. Gonzalez-Fletcher (D-Chula Vista), and backed by powerful unions such as the AFL-CIO, what this law did was remove a person’s right to choose to work as an Independent Contractor, freelancer, or gig worker in the state.
My life as a freelance writer, reinvention coach, and Yoga instructor was upended, as were the lives and livelihoods of millions of other independent professionals, from translators and interpreters, to musicians and the theater community. Even after all this time, a new crop of professionals are discovering that they too fall under the heavy boot of this poorly crafted law.