Access to Talent
The modern workforce requires a flexible employment environment that allows workers to find opportunities that match their skills, interests, and availability. TechNet opposes efforts to eliminate or restrict this flexibility, including restrictions on remote and hybrid work, restrictions on opportunities for independent contractors and consultants, inflexible overtime rules, and indiscriminate expansion of collective bargaining rules. TechNet supports efforts to develop new avenues and safe harbors that empower companies to voluntarily provide new protections and benefits to workers where appropriate without impacting classification outcomes.
Sharing Economy
The sharing economy is creating income opportunities in every corner of the country, allowing people to work independently and on discretionary schedules, use their personal property and skills to generate income, help them expand their businesses, and provide for themselves and their families. Policymakers should ensure that efforts to regulate the sharing economy protect innovation and individual empowerment, are not overly burdensome, and recognize the unique nature of the sharing economy when compared to traditional providers.
As policymakers consider rules focused on the sharing economy, TechNet encourages policymakers to employ data-driven approaches to crafting policy that focus on the broader economic impact to communities and deemphasize the advocacy positions of legacy business interests. As the sharing economy continues to mature, TechNet encourages policymakers to consult relevant laws in guiding their policy decisions.
Portable Benefits
 The composition of the U.S. workforce is changing as new technologies have provided low-barrier access to flexible, independent work. This type of work allows individuals and families in need of supplemental income, including during periods of unemployment or underemployment, to access work on demand. Over time, in large part due to the availability of new opportunities to offer services and sell goods, the independent income opportunities have increased and serve as an important source of supplemental earnings for millions of Americans.
Many in the modern, independent workforce find they get better financial returns on their skills than similar groups in the traditional workforce. Perhaps the biggest benefit to this new workforce is the flexibility that self-employment, independent contracting, and freelancing provide, which allows the independent workforce to balance work, family, and leisure activities differently than in a traditional employment relationship.
But the flexibility of independent work may come with challenges regarding access to important benefits and protections. The binary employment system forces workers to choose between employment with benefits but less flexibility, or independent contracting with flexibility but fewer benefits.
To address these challenges, state and federal policymakers are introducing policies to make it easier for independent workers to obtain and fund benefits. Policy solutions need to maintain the flexibility that workers who favor both online and offline independent work need and want, and they should weigh improving access to benefits for independent workers and their families. Because any such benefits must travel with the worker so they can continue to work independently for a variety of companies or individuals, the benefits must be portable.
Any portable benefits program should be guided by the following principles:
- Benefits should be tied to individual workers, enabling them to contribute to and use their benefits across multiple platforms or sources of income. Workers should also have flexibility over how to use their benefits.
- Programs should maintain the flexibility these workers seek while allowing technology companies to continue to grow and provide earning opportunities for more workers.
- Benefits should be proportional to the work completed, with more active workers receiving more benefits. Workers should also be able to make additional contributions to their account.
- Policy solutions should not limit technology companies’ abilities to expand the benefits they offer to attract and retain independent workers.
- The program should incentivize companies to provide portable benefits to workers by establishing a safe harbor with respect to the independent contractor status of workers.
- The program should avoid duplicating existing requirements or creating unclear or confusing overlaps or conflicts with existing requirements.
- States should engage multiple stakeholders, including third parties, to establish a mechanism to manage portable benefits.
- Independent contractors deriving their benefits from a portable account should be eligible for the same kinds of tax breaks and pre-tax contributions as employees.
Other Policy Agendas
