This is a rerelease of episode #73, from September 2020, about the devastating effects the federal PRO Act would have on independent contractors in the U.S.   I am rereleasing this now because the House has announced its plans to vote on this act next week, the week of March 8. We need your help! We must all tell our House representative and our two senators the impact of the PRO Act on our careers. We must explain that we are not “gig workers,” that we are career professionals just like lawyers and accountants. Please tell your story about how you benefit by being an independent contractor.   The PRO Act will likely pass the Democratic House. But, in the 50-50 split Senate, there is hope, but we must get the word out and talk to our legislators and senators now.   This is a call to action!   Here is the edited version of the original show notes from September, with resources below: Today’s guest are Kim Kavin and Karon Warren, two longtime freelance writers who have built successful freelance businesses. Both are active in the fight against the national PRO Act. Kim was active fighting against a similar state bill in New Jersey, and Karon heads up the national efforts to defeat the PRO Act through the grassroots organization Fight for Freelancers. The PRO Act (Protecting the Right to Organize) was introduced in Congress in late 2019. The initial intent of the bill was to protect workers who are misclassified and give them the ability to join a union. However, the bill was amended to add a classification test taken directly from California’s disastrous anti-freelance bill (now law) known as AB5. That test is called the ABC Test and was written in the 1930s for factory workers. The way the ABC Test is currently written prohibits most independent contractors from working with clients. It doesn’t matter if you call yourself a freelancer, consultant, an agency, whatever — if you are a W9 independent contractor, this affects you. The rest of the PRO Act does not harm freelancers, so freelancers need to focus their efforts on getting the ABC Test part of the bill changed. The push for this bill is union funded, and Democrats—including President Joe Biden—support the bill. In California, legislators “weaponized” the ABC Test by deleting some of the original language. The ABC Test has three prongs (A, B, C) that independent contractors must pass in order to do business. It’s the B part that is the problem. B originally had two parts: Part 1 says you can’t be in the same line of business as the company that is paying you to do the work. But Part 2 negates Part 1 if you do all of your work off company premises. Most freelancers can pass Part 2. However, California deleted Part 2, leaving only the part that says you can’t be in the same line of business as the company paying you. That went into law in January 2020 in the state and destroyed careers of all types of independent contractors, who could no longer work for companies in their industry. This included respiratory therapists and other medical professionals who contract with various hospitals — they lost work when they were needed the most during the pandemic. Other careers and industries affected include journalists, content writers, editors, real estate appraisers, comedians, theater workers, symphonies and orchestras, truck drivers, translators and more. In fact, California has found more than 300 industries hurt by AB5. California freelancer writers managed to get an exemption in the law that capped their submissions to 35 a year for each client. The exemption partially helped some writers, but it also had a lot of problems — for example, content writers, blog writers and newspaper columnists could quickly and easily hit 35 submissions, ending their work for that year for that client. Forbes, Hearst and New York Times were among those who have stopped hiring California freelancers. In December 2019, the AB5 copycat bills started popping up in Democrat strongholds (blue states),