The New Republic - Biden’s Best Path to a Pro-Worker Economy Runs Through the Federal Trade Commission

Legal director Sandeep Vaheesan and chief economist Brian Callaci wrote an op-ed calling on the Federal Trade Commission to support independent contractors working by banning contracts that exert employment-like control while depriving contractors of rights given to employees.

With Labor Day approaching, President Joe Biden and his administration will no doubt be out in force, touting their pro-worker bona fides. Among the executive and administrative agencies trumpeting themselves as a friend to working people will be the Federal Trade Commission. This is something of a sea change: For decades, the FTC ignored the domination of workers by employers and even thwarted organizing by independent contractors. It infamously sued the public defenders of Washington, D.C., in 1983 for going on strike and sided with Uber against rideshare drivers in 2017.

But under Chair Lina Khan, the FTC has pledged to change course. The agency has consistently indicated it wants to protect workers from corporate power. In what is probably a first for a sitting FTC chair, Khan even visited a picket line to speak with striking members of the Writers Guild of America. Given its authority to police “unfair methods of competition,” the FTC has broad power to build a more just economy—a power it recognized and promised to use in a policy statement published last November.

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