A bill before the New York state Senate seeks to reclassify many independent contractors as employees, advancing a standard similar to that of California's ruinous Assembly Bill 5, or A.B. 5. The proposed S2052 would implement the "ABC Test," which classifies workers as employees unless the (a) worker is free from the control of the hiring entity, (b) the work performed is outside the hiring entity's bailiwick, and (c) the worker is "customarily engaged" in the type of work he is hired to do.
S2052's sponsor memo extols that the bill gives "the most basic human rights of American workers to a voice on their jobs and a role in shaping their futures." However, individual agency in "shaping their futures" is precisely what the bill would quash.
