The Future of Work

The continued growth of the gig and sharing (or “on demand”) economy has created income opportunities in virtually every corner of the country, allowing people to work independently and on preferred discretionary schedules, expand their businesses, and provide for themselves and their families with greater flexibility.  At the same time, remote and hybrid work have brought economic, social, and environmental benefits and will remain a pillar of work across all industries moving forward.

Policymakers should ensure that efforts to oversee or regulate new technologies further innovation and individual empowerment instead of stifling it.  To that end, TechNet supports the following principles:

Gig and Sharing Economy

• The modern workforce requires a flexible environment that allows workers to find opportunities that best match their skills, interests, and availability on their own terms. TechNet opposes efforts to eliminate or severely restrict this essential flexibility, including restrictions on the use of independent contractor and consultant classifications, inflexible overtime rules, and indiscriminate expansion of collective bargaining rules.
• Tax and labor policies should help promote economic opportunities, provide clarity and avoid creating significant administrative burdens for business creators or independent contractors.
• Federal policies should promote experimentation with innovative efforts to establish portable benefits programs that provide access to benefits for classes of workers who have traditionally lacked those opportunities and empower workers to maintain benefits as they move from opportunity to opportunity. These efforts should incentivize companies to provide benefits to independent workers without impacting classification outcomes.

Maximizing the Benefits of Remote and Hybrid Work

• TechNet supports government policies that broaden the inclusive economic opportunities afforded by remote and hybrid work, including for caretakers, the disabled, and those without access to major economic centers. To that end, we support the establishment of a predictable legal framework that reflects the permanent nature of fully remote and hybrid work across industries.
• As part of such a framework, tax and labor policies should help promote the adoption of flexible work opportunities and recognize the unique designs of these innovative business models.
• TechNet appreciates that minimum hourly rates and minimum required salaries (for determining exempt status under the FLSA and related state laws) will increase over time, and supports predictable, gradual increases.
• Similarly, we support public investment in broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved locations and efforts to incentivize the development of co-working spaces, which would provide for broader fully remote and hybrid work opportunities in both rural and urban environments. TechNet’s priorities on broadband policy can be found here.