What Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren Don’t Get About Work
Their plans to strengthen unions would leave out millions of Americans
Organized labor is having a moment on the 2020 campaign trail. Progressive Democrats like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are proposing a new era of worker protections, with expanded unions at the core of their plans.
There’s just one problem. Unions are only for people who have a job. Millions of people who make their living as contractors would be entirely left out.
The promise of the Democrats’ labor platform harkens back to a time when Americans could work for one employer over many years, expect respectable wages, and a pension when they retire. But that kind of traditional employment isn’t the standard denominator that it once was. Today, Americans are changing jobs at a greater frequency and 35% of the American workforce is freelancing — which is a 10 million person uptick from five years ago. By most estimates, freelance work will grow substantially in the years to come.
And yet, the labor plans introduced by Democrats like Sanders and Warren leave little room for America’s nonemployee workforce. That’s because the framework for those plans boosts America’s unions and gets employers to reclassify contractors as employees so that they can…
