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My company uses a lot of independent contractors. I have employees but, given the nature of the work my firm does (short term projects), it makes more sense for me to hire specialists to perform certain tasks rather than bring on a new employee. I have been using essentially the same group of independent contractors for the past 10 years. Some of them work as little as 10 hours a month, others as much as 30 hours a week depending on the jobs we have. Clearly, I'm not the only small business doing this. Sites like UpWork, Fiverr, Guru and...

As the Democratic Party coalesces around 2020 candidate Joe Biden as an alternative to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, onlookers have taken it for granted that the former vice president represents a “moderate” Democratic option. While this is true, it’s only due to the radical extent of Sanders’s far-left socialism; Biden himself is no centrist. In fact, he’s quite left-wing on a number of fronts, and his stance backing job-killing California regulations is just the latest example. In a weekend tweet, the Democratic front-runner touted his support for AB 5, an extremely controversial California regulation that limited companies’ ability to hire...

A new California law intended to force employers to hire workers as employees rather than treat them as contractors is killing freelance jobs across the Golden State and leaving those contractors in limbo. Assembly Bill 5 (A.B. 5), which took effect January 1, was drafted in response to Dynamex Operations West Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles, a landmark court case that established a three-pronged test to determine whether companies are correctly classifying employees and contractors. That test says that contractors must control their workload, not perform work within the business's primary scope of operations, and be "customarily engaged"...

Are California Democrats—responsible for the state’s new anti-gig-worker law, AB5—so out of touch that they’re not aware of the growing anger of their constituents? It appears so. Since AB5 took effect on January 1, hundreds of thousands of Californians are finding their businesses in tatters. Musicians can’t join bands for a one-night gig, chefs can’t join forces with caterers, nurses can’t work at various hospitals, and writers must cap their submissions per media outlet to 35 per year. Under the law, these freelancers can no longer conduct the same business-to-business transactions they have for years or even decades. Clients with...

Nancy Pelosi famously proclaimed that Democrats had to pass ObamaCare to find out what was in it. On the other hand, Democrats in California last year passed legislation outlawing many freelance and independent contracting jobs knowing the disruption it would cause—and voters are now discovering the damage. Ride-hailing app Uber this week rolled out changes for drivers and riders in California in an effort to duck the state’s new labor law AB5. That law reclassified a large swath of independent contractors from freelance journalists to Uber drivers as employees who are owed rest breaks, workers compensation, health benefits and paid...

A nonprofit legal foundation is suing California on behalf of freelance workers who say the state's recently passed Assembly Bill 5 (AB5) will destroy their livelihoods. Set to take effect on January 1, 2020, AB5 will make it illegal for contractors who reside in California to create more than 35 pieces of content in a year for a single company, unless the outlet hires them as an employee. "By enforcing the 35-submission limit, Defendant, acting under color of state law, unconstitutionally deprives Plaintiffs' members of their freedom of speech as protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S....

Rather than spending the holidays relaxing, Will Griffith needs to decide whether he should immediately leave the freelance gig he's had for the past five years or stick around until his contract is terminated in March. Griffith was one of 200 Vox Media freelancers in California who lost their job on Monday. The company nixed freelancers because of a new state law that defines some positions previously filled by freelancers or gig workers as full-time roles with benefits. The law takes effect January 1. California lawmakers meant for the new law, Assembly Bill 5, to help Uber and Lyft drivers...

Hey guys, before I say anything, please note that I tried to post this vanity in "general/chat" but there was not a category that fit.Here's the deal.I have just taken the (some) steps to start a freelance career.I have been checking out freelancing for a while now at freelancer.com and upwork.com and others.I am still an outsider looking in.But I am going in...and I will share my experiences here for my fellow freepers.I am going to start with freelance projects that are involved with MS Excel and VBA. Starting at the bottom and working up from there.Here's the thing for...

With the rise of flexible working schedules, the freelance economy, and video conferencing, more Americans are getting their jobs done without ever heading into an office, according to new data from the American Time Use Survey released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Among all workers, 23% report spending all or part of their day working from home. That’s up from less than 19% in 2003, the first year for which there’s comparable data.

A short gig doing security for the True Blood television show. A stint driving for a rental car company. A week as a customer service representative at a retail store. This is how Delvontaie Antwine, 34, makes do in California's economic recovery — earning a few scattered paychecks a month from odd temp jobs while living with relatives in Silver Lake. Each week, he goes to a career center, where recently he was looking into positions transporting patients for Kaiser Permanente. "I just need something consistent; otherwise, I'm like a puppy chasing its tail," he said. "I'm at the bottom...

It's been called the Gig Economy, Freelance Nation, the Rise of the Creative Class, and the e-conomy, with the "e" standing for electronic, entrepreneurial, or perhaps eclectic. Everywhere we look, we can see the U.S. workforce undergoing a massive change. No longer do we work at the same company for 25 years, waiting for the gold watch, expecting the benefits and security that come with full-time employment. We're no longer simply lawyers, or photographers, or writers. Instead, we're part-time lawyers-cum- amateur photographers who write on the side. Today, careers consist of piecing together various types of work, juggling multiple clients,...

To my Conservative Friends: As I have told ya in the past - That Barack Obama - He's one smooth talker!!!! If any of you just came back from a 2-year trip to Mars and had no idea who Barry Hussein Obama was, and watched our new President on Meet the Depressed yesterday, you would swear to Ronald Reagan that you were listening to a new, Republican President. Not a rock-ribbed lefty from the south side of Chi-town!!! The obvious question that begs for an answer is - Do you buy it??? Now, I don't want to spoil your Monday...

Congress: What, exactly, does House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's latest junket to Iraq have to do with her official duties? Her inability to keep her amateur fingers out of the foreign policy pie suggests a political power grab.Pelosi went to Iraq uninvited Saturday, and her reception was less than warm. Iraq's democratically elected Nouri al-Maliki government wanted nothing to do with her until she admitted the truth about Iraq's progress as a nation and quit braying that U.S. troops must be immediately pulled out, a proposal so naive that even radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr opposes it. Message through, Pelosi admitted that...

TWO weeks after my husband and I quit our jobs, gave up our Brooklyn apartment and moved to Mexico to travel and work as freelance reporters, I discovered I was pregnant. Among the subjects I hoped to write about in Mexico was its restrictive abortion laws. Now I was contemplating an abortion myself. Even though my period was 10 days late, it hadn’t occurred to me that I could be pregnant....

I don't know if this is allowed on FR (sorry if I'm violating something here), but there was a compelling new book/author being featured this morning on FOX and Friends by free-lance New York-based journalist Steven Vincent entitled, "In the Red Zone." Vincent, a swarthy and dangerous-looking guy embedded himself among the people of Bagdhad, not in the safety of the Green Zone, but out in the town. Talking to hundreds of Iraqis over months in late '03 and early '04, the premise of his book as he explained it today is that current journalists aren't reporting the war in...

NEW YORK The New York Times angered hundreds of freelance photographers last week when it distributed a contract some are calling "outrageous," "insulting" and just plain "sad." The contract asks freelance photographers to assign joint copyright ownership to the Times (Click for QuikCap), giving the newspaper the absolute right to exploit the photographs for the life of the copyright and collect all licensing fees, without payment to the photographer. The Times had no previous written agreement with freelancers. Photographers, copyright lawyers and industry trade groups have objected to the new contract, saying it puts the freelancer at a distinct disadvantage....