A new book by MIT economist Paul Osterman argues that Congress should settle worker classification by writing the ABC test into federal law, a proposal that independent contractor advocate Kim Kavin picked apart on September 1 in Freelance Busting. The book, titled Disposable Workers and published by Harvard University Press, frames contractors, temps, and franchisees as workers pushed to the edges of the labor market.
The fight here is over vocabulary as much as it is over policy. Terms coined in academic work tend to show up years later in bill text, and the language used to describe independent contractors shapes whether lawmakers treat that status as a choice worth protecting or a loophole worth closing.
What The Book Actually Argues
Osterman, a professor emeritus of human resources and management at MIT Sloan, does not call for eliminating independent work outright. He writes that “it is clear that, for many people, being a freelancer is desirable,” and that any initiative aimed at entirely eliminating that choice or making the status harder to obtain “would be misguided.”
His fix is a single national definition of employment. “The ideal solution would begin with legislative clarification of how to define an employee. A straightforward approach would be federal adoption of the so-called ABC rule, already in use by over thirty states,” he writes, pointing to the PRO Act as the vehicle.
He also concedes points that complicate the case for reclassification, acknowledging that roughly two-thirds of rideshare drivers work part-time and that most have health coverage through another job or a spouse.
Why This Matters For Independent Contractors
The ABC test presumes a worker is an employee unless the hiring business can satisfy all three prongs, and the B prong is the one that ends careers. It typically requires that the work performed fall outside the hiring company’s usual course of business, which is exactly the condition a freelance writer hired by a publisher or a designer hired by an agency cannot meet.
Kavin’s central objection is that there is no single ABC test to federalize. Pennsylvania omits the B prong entirely, and California’s version of the B prong differs from New Jersey’s, even though both states apply all three parts.
That variation is not a technicality. A federal standard would have to pick one state’s wording, and whichever version Congress chose would decide whether entire categories of independent work remain legal.
What Self-Employed Readers Should Do Next
Find out which test your state actually applies before assuming your arrangement is safe, because the ABC test, the common law test, and the economic realities test can produce different answers for the same contract. State labor department websites publish the applicable standards, which often differ across unemployment insurance, wage law, and workers’ compensation.
Tighten the parts of your business that a B-prong analysis would examine. Multiple concurrent clients, your own business entity, your own tools, a written scope of work, and marketing that shows you sell to the general public all strengthen your position under any of these tests.
New Jersey freelancers have a nearer deadline, since the state’s amended ABC test rule is still scheduled to take effect October 1. Review any contracts that renew after that date with the new language in hand.
What To Watch Next
Watch whether the PRO Act framing resurfaces in the next Congress, and watch which advocacy language gets adopted alongside it. Federal rulemaking has been moving the other direction this year, as covered in our update on where the Labor Department’s contractor rule stands, which means state law is currently the more immediate risk for most independents.
Also watch for hearings that cite the book directly. Kavin testified before the Senate HELP Committee on this subject in 2025, and academic work of this kind usually enters the policy record through committee testimony before it ever appears in a bill.
Photo by Siora Photography: Unsplash
