UNIONS CAN’T COMPETE, SO THEY DON’T
Here’s a great quote from the Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal which gets to the heart of the public’s growing dissatisfaction with public employees:
“Most reasonable steps to restrain public-sector employment costs are smothered by the unions. Study after study has shown that states and cities could shave 20% to 40% off the cost of many services—fire fighting, public transportation, garbage collection, administrative functions, even prison operations—through competitive contracting to private providers. But unions have blocked many of those efforts. Public employees maintain that they are underpaid relative to equally qualified private-sector workers, yet they are deathly afraid of competitive bidding for government services.”
Moore also points out that “More Americans work for the government than in manufacturing, farming, fishing, forestry, mining and utilities combined.” At this rate, we’ll ALL be working for the government soon enough.
Add to that the fact that while unemployment in the private sector in Nevada, which has led the nation and has consistently been running in the 14-15 percent range, Gov. Brian Sandoval told us last week that unemployment for government workers in Nevada is only around 1 percent.
This has to stop.
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ROGUE EMPLOYERS THREATEN INDEPENDENT CONTRACTORS
The government, at all levels, would prefer that every worker work for the government so as to better control society. Fortunately, heavy-handed government bureaucracy, red tape and taxation have yet to quash the American entrepreneurial spirit.
But don’t think they won’t keep trying.
Indeed, short of forcing every able-bodied citizen to work directly for the government doing whatever the government thinks they are best suited for, having jobs in the private sector tightly controlled and regulated is the next best thing….especially when it comes to taxation.
You see, as long as a worker is an “employee,” then the “employer” is required to make sure the government gets its “cut” from the worker’s wages even before the worker gets his “taste.” Thanks to what is known as “withholding,” the government forces private sector employers to deduct the government’s share of a worker’s wages for local, state and federal taxes, Social Security, Medicare and workers comp, and remit it to “the man.”
And then there are all the workplace rules, wage controls, reporting requirements and OSHA mandates.
Indeed, if you’re ever been an employer, you know full well just how much of a pain in the arse it is to provide your fellow citizens meaningful employment thanks to the government sticking its big fat nose into what should be a private contractual relationship between two consenting parties in which a fair day’s wage is agreed to and paid for a fair day’s work.
And because of what a hassle government interference is in such employment relationships, many would-be employers and would-be employees opt instead to operate not as employer-employee, but as client-independent contractor. The client pays the independent contractor a mutually agreed upon rate for completing a mutually agreed upon service. The independent contractor, for his or her part, pays all of the government required taxes and fees him or herself.
As Randi Thompson of NFIB explained in legislative testimony recently, “independent contractors are virtually everywhere,” making up “more than 7 percent of the workforce,” including, “consultants, hair stylists, computer techs, software engineers, package deliverers, taxi cab drivers and even emergency room physicians.”
Thompson further notes that more and more women with children are finding the flexibility and control over their time afforded as an independent contractor works best for them and their families.
Of course, the government still has the insatiable desire to control every aspect of a citizen’s life, so there are, naturally, rules governing independent contractors, especially in determining what exactly constitutes and independent contractor, who can and cannot be an independent contractor, and who must be treated and controlled as an “employee” instead.
Indeed, the IRS has a “20 Factor Test” it uses as a guide for determining whether or not a worker should be classified as an employee or an independent contractor, while states all across the country are now adopting what are generally referred to as “worker misclassification” bills designed to further limit the use of self-employed contractors.
And because government is an Energizer Bunny control freak that will use any excuse to expand its dominion, it’s critically important that rogue employers abusing the independent contractor option are stopped before they ruin it for everyone else.
Employers like…FedEx.
Back in August of 2007, California’s Second Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling declaring that FedEx drivers were employees, not independent contractors. In its ruling the Court noted that the drivers “look like FedEx employees, act like FedEx employees, are paid like FedEx employees, and receive many employee benefits.”
Nevertheless, FedEx continues to abuse the independent contractor model which has helped spark not only a multitude of additional lawsuits in other states, but swarms of “worker misclassification” bills from sea to shining sea.
If true independent contractors in the private sector don’t start blowing the whistle and policing its own, FedEx and others could well be the proverbial bad apples that spoil the entire barrel. Independent contractors of the world, unite!
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FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“(Nevada) has been more concerned with how much money it spends on education than with how the bureaucracy spends it and whether those practices might be the problem instead of the solution.” – Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Glenn Cook
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