After a year of widespread lockdowns and dramatic changes for businesses, there’s nothing our job creators need more than certainty.
This is the basis for legislation I filed along with Sen. Roger Marshall, the Save Local Business Act, which provides relief from bureaucratic headaches for small-business owners. This bill would reverse onerous rules produced by unelected bureaucrats and instead define joint employers only as businesses that are firmly in control of the conditions of their workers’ employment.
Historically, this has been the commonsense definition of a joint employer. But a National Labor Relations Board stocked with appointees from former President Barack Obama had other ideas. These anti-business bureaucrats decided that there should be a dramatic expansion of what we consider the essential terms of a worker’s employment. Some common examples of companies this would apply to include those working within the franchise model, entrepreneurs who contract out certain services, or temporary staffing agencies.
But this move has serious consequences that put the operations of small businesses, including franchisees, at risk. For one, businesses face the likely possibility of a massive increase in legal and compliance costs — which inevitably reduces job opportunities for working-class people.
Such a broad definition would also potentially make business owners liable for actions taken by other companies on behalf of their employees and subject them to bargaining with unions representing another employer’s workers.
Now, Democrats in Congress are seeking to codify this new definition in the PRO Act, their massive anti-jobs legislation that serves as nothing more than a wish list from America’s largest union bosses.
We can’t let that happen. That is why I and 65 co-sponsors of the House and Senate legislation have set out to right this wrong produced by people who have more experience crushing jobs than creating them. The Save Local Business Act would specify that employers can only be considered joint employers if they “directly, actually, and immediately exercise significant control over the essential terms and conditions of employment.”
Businesses should have control over their own operations, plain and simple.
A broad coalition of job-creating organizations backs the Save Local Business Act, including groups representing American restaurants, small businesses, and franchisees. The diverse coalition behind a narrowly tailored, traditional definition of joint employer is proof that my bill is exactly what our economy needs.
This includes stakeholders from my home state of Kentucky, such as the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, Kentucky Retail Federation, Kentucky Restaurant Association, and Greater Louisville Inc. As the economic engine of the commonwealth, employers in Louisville know that regulatory certainty and clarity is essential to enterprise.
If Congress were to act by passing the Save Local Business Act, the operations of numerous franchisees and small businesses would receive regulatory certainty, and our slow economic recovery would get a much-needed lift. Business owners need a boost in order to return our economy to pre-pandemic levels, and it’s on Congress to remove roadblocks to making that happen.
James Comer, a Republican, represents Kentucky’s 1st Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives and serves as the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.
