If you read news, listen to public radio or watch public television, chances are some of your news comes from a freelance reporter like me.
Proposed legislation could make that illegal. Weird, right? Here’s how and why.
This week, the House passed the PRO Act. It now heads to the Senate. At its core, the PRO Act is a labor reform bill. The key idea is to help Uber and Lyft drivers, and other gig economy workers. As good as that sounds, it can also take away a freelancer’s choice to freelance.
Without getting too into the legislative weeds, the PRO Act, as proposed, uses a set of criteria to determine if someone should be paid as a contractor or a full employee.
Known as the ABC Test, one part states journalists must be treated as employees UNLESS “the service is performed outside the usual course of the business of the employer.” So, under the ABC Test, since journalists do journalism, they cannot do journalism as a freelancer.
This matters because many freelance journalists, myself included, want to be freelance. It gives us the ability to write for multiple publications, and allows us to carve out our own beats. We’re our own bosses, set our own schedules and enjoy the freedoms that come with that.
As written, the PRO Act would require freelancers to become W2 employees of a news outlet, effectively ending the small businesses we’ve built as independent journalists.
This also spells disaster for many small papers, nonprofit newsrooms, public radio stations and public TV outlets who cannot afford to hire all the journalists needed.
It would also affect the quality of news from these outlets. For instance, at the Las Vegas Optic, as a freelancer, I am able to spend more time on deeply reported enterprise and investigative stories that, if I were on staff, I would not have time to do.
The PRO Act is headed to the Senate, so please contact your senators and let them know the ABC Test has negative consequences for freelance journalists, as well as musicians, photographers, graphic designers and a lot more.
For more details about why the PRO Act’s ABC Test is detrimental, check out Fight for Freelancers fact sheet.
