{"id":1691219,"date":"2026-09-07T10:00:28","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T14:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/observer.com\/?p=1691219"},"modified":"2026-09-07T09:39:37","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T13:39:37","slug":"labor-day-independent-workers-social-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/observer.com\/2026\/09\/labor-day-independent-workers-social-contract\/","title":{"rendered":"This Labor Day, It\u2019s Time for a New Social Contract With Workers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Supporters
Independent workers make up a growing share of the workforce, yet too many of the protections built for American workers still depend on a traditional employer. Photo by New York Times Co.\/Hulton Archive\/Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Monday morning, a teaching artist leaves a Bronx public school after leading music class. In the afternoon, she edits a nonprofit newsletter. That evening, she performs at a community theater. She works three jobs and pays taxes on every dollar she earns. However, should she get sick in the next month, no single employer will help her pay for health insurance. Labor Day was founded to honor the American worker. This year, it’s worth asking: which American worker?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, an estimated <\/span>58 million Americans,<\/span><\/a>\u00a0or 36 percent of the U.S. workforce, identify as independent workers, spanning freelance, contract, gig and temporary work. In some industries, such as in the arts, <\/span>half of workers<\/span><\/a> are self-employed in their primary job. Data from Upwork\u2019s 2025 Future Workforce Index estimates that freelancers contributed <\/span>$1.5 trillion in economic earnings<\/span><\/a> in 2024. Yet many of the protections and benefits of traditional employment\u2014health insurance, retirement savings, paid leave and workers\u2019 compensation\u2014still depend on having a single, full-time employer.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As the affordability crisis forces more people to cobble together income from multiple gigs and artificial intelligence transforms how work gets done, millions of Americans are likely to earn a living outside traditional employment. Many workers value the flexibility and autonomy that freelance work can provide. The question is whether the social contract can evolve to protect workers without requiring them to give up that flexibility. <\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>We need new worker protections that account for the ways people actually work. Research conducted over the past year with creative independent workers, including surveys, interviews and co-design workshops with Freelancer Union members, points to a consistent and urgent problem: the cost of healthcare. Income volatility can make it nearly impossible to stay covered. Navigating a fragmented system of options is a second job that nobody pays for. Ninety percent of respondents identified cost as a major or moderate barrier to accessing benefits.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In a Freelancers Union <\/span>survey of more than 600 respondents<\/span><\/a> conducted as enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies were set to expire, 77 percent said they would lose coverage, downgrade their plans or cut back on essentials such as housing, groceries or transportation without the subsidies. Eighty-two percent said access to healthcare would affect how they vote. Those concerns are no longer hypothetical. The ACA\u2019s enhanced premium tax credits expired at the end of 2025. KFF estimated that without them, subsidized Marketplace enrollees would see their average annual premium payments rise from <\/span>$888 in 2025 to $1,904 in 2026<\/span><\/a>, a 114 percent increase, or an additional $1,016 per year. <\/span>
\n<\/span>
\n<\/span>If state and federal lawmakers want to support workers, they should protect and expand benefits that connect directly to people rather than their jobs. That means restoring and expanding the ACA premium tax credits. It means preserving affordable public coverage options such as New York\u2019s Essential Plan. And it means piloting new portable-benefit models that allow workers to build security across multiple jobs, clients and sources of income.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The New Deal\u2019s unfinished promise<\/b><\/h3>\n

Nearly 90 years ago, in the depths of the Great Depression, the federal government built the foundation of the modern American social safety net. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the New Deal into law: the Social Security Act of 1935, the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Together, they established the protections that reshaped the relationship between American workers, employers and the government.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But those protections were never universal. Agricultural and domestic workers\u2014jobs held overwhelmingly by Black Americans\u2014were <\/span>deliberately excluded from major provisions<\/span><\/a> of the New Deal-era labor framework. Those exclusions\u2014in part the price of Southern Democratic representatives\u2019 votes\u2014helped establish a system in which access to economic security was tied to the type of job a person held, and to whether that job was recognized by law as traditional employment. We are still living with the consequences of that compromise.<\/span><\/p>\n

To this day, nearly <\/span>96 percent of Black-owned businesses<\/span><\/a> are businesses of one. For many of these business owners, there is no employer on the other side of the benefits equation. The same structural problem that once excluded categories of workers from the New Deal\u2019s protections now manifests as a benefits system built around a single employer\u2014one that does not fit a worker who is the employer, shutting many Americans out of the safety net that the rest of America takes for granted.<\/span><\/p>\n

The result is a two-tiered system. Workers in traditional employment can receive health insurance, retirement contributions and paid leave through an employer, with those benefits structured by labor law and subsidized by the tax code. Independent workers must often assemble the same protections themselves, while absorbing the administrative and financial costs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Recent federal policy has made the gap more consequential. The 2025 federal budget law, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, <\/span>eliminated $7.5 billion in annual funding<\/span><\/a> for New York’s expanded Essential Plan. New York subsequently <\/span>transitioned back to the Basic Health Program framework<\/span><\/a>, preserving coverage for about 1.3 million people but making approximately 450,000 others ineligible for the expanded program beginning July 2026.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At the same time, the federal government continues to subsidize employer-sponsored health insurance through the tax code. That subsidy primarily benefits people with traditional full-time jobs. Independent workers don\u2019t qualify for it. The result is a progressively difficult question for workers outside traditional employment: If the economy depends on their work, why should their access to basic economic security depend on whether someone else employs them?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the American worker we celebrate this Labor Day, one we refuse to protect. We can do better. We already know what a new social contract looks like. The models exist.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Portable benefits are already being tested<\/b><\/h3>\n

Portable benefits would attach benefits to the workers rather than a particular employer, allowing a person to carry health coverage, retirement savings, paid leave or other benefits from one job or client to another. Several states <\/span>are exploring versions of this approach<\/span><\/a>. Washington has created a benefits framework for rideshare drivers that provides workers\u2019 compensation coverage, minimum-pay protections and paid sick leave while maintaining their independent contractor status. Pennsylvania has tested portable benefits through a <\/span>DoorDash pilot program <\/span><\/a>to incentivize recruitment and retention.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In New York, there is <\/span>proposed legislation<\/span><\/a> to allow workers to buy into the Essential Plan on a sliding scale, meaning freelancers could access public health coverage with $0 deductibles and minimal out-of-pocket costs, regardless of income. In Congress, there are proposals to <\/span>restore the enhanced ACA subsidies<\/span><\/a> that kept premiums affordable for millions of people.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And here in New York City, the Freelancers Union and the National Arts Policy Alliance are working with stakeholders from across the creative community to collaboratively design a portable benefits agenda, including a NYC portable benefits pilot for the teaching artists who bring music, theater and visual arts into public schools\u2014workers who have never had a single employer, who combine income from multiple sources and who deserve a benefits structure that works for the way they work. One proposal in the pilot is an Independent Worker Benefit Fund that could provide health benefits to freelancers and independent creative workers performing publicly contracted work, with participating public contracts including a dedicated contribution toward workers\u2019 health benefits. The pilot would test a model that could ultimately extend to private employers and companies that rely on freelance creative labor, creating a shared standard for contributing to portable benefits.<\/span><\/p>\n

A social contract that moves with the worker<\/b><\/h3>\n

The policy challenge is to design a benefits program that reflects how independent workers actually earn and live. The goal should be to make economic security portable. The independent workforce includes tens of millions of Americans and generates trillions of dollars in economic activity. We need a benefits system that treats independent workers as the full contributors to this economy that they are. We have proof of concept. What we need is the political courage to scale it.<\/span><\/p>\n

America\u2019s social contract should not hinge on a W-2. The next great chapter of American labor will not be written by bringing every worker back into yesterday’s economy. It will be written by building institutions worthy of tomorrow’s workforce that allow workers to keep the flexibility they value while carrying the security they need from one job to the next.<\/span><\/p>\n

The independent workforce has been patient. It has been resilient. It has built this country’s culture, media, arts and technology, often without a safety net. It’s time for that social contract to move with them.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Freelancers Union\u2019s Andrea Gordillo and the National Arts Policy Alliance\u2019s Althea Erickson examine why America\u2019s social contract must evolve to reflect the realities of independent work. Erickson and Gordillo argue that benefits should follow workers across jobs, clients and sources of income rather than depend on a single employer.<\/p>\n Read More<\/a>","protected":false},"author":177935337,"featured_media":1691222,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_ef_editorial_meta_date_issue-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","_ef_editorial_meta__first-draft-date":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"post_tag":[423807525,423973275,423863962,423996170,423986742,419790700],"company":[423975365],"channel":[186,423806427,423811888,423875639],"location":[],"nyo_column":[423982261],"person":[423893761],"nyo_post_hidden":[],"coauthors":[424019402,424019401],"class_list":{"0":"post-1691219","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"tag-employment","8":"tag-labor-day","9":"tag-new-deal","10":"tag-organizational-leadership-experts","11":"tag-policy-experts","12":"tag-workforce","13":"observer_company-doordash","14":"channel-business","15":"channel-finance","16":"channel-policy","17":"channel-economy","18":"nyo_column-expert-insights","19":"nyo_person-franklin-d-roosevelt","20":"style-expert-insights"},"acf":{"homepage_position":"","homepage_title":"","homepage_excerpt":"","alternative_og_image":"","headline":{"seo_headline":""},"subheadline":{"optimized_seo_description":"","optimized_social_excerpt":""}},"apple_news_notices":[],"parsely":{"version":"1.1.0","canonical_url":"https:\/\/observer.com\/2026\/09\/labor-day-independent-workers-social-contract\/","smart_links":{"inbound":0,"outbound":0},"traffic_boost_suggestions_count":0,"meta":[],"rendered":"","tracker_url":"https:\/\/cdn.parsely.com\/keys\/observer.com\/p.js"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/observer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/09\/GettyImages-85698829.jpg?quality=80","coauthors_byline":"By Andrea Gordillo and Althea Erickson","display_channel":"","thumbnail":"\"Supporters