Support Portable Benefits for Independent Workers
Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA) invites individuals and nonprofit organizations to express your support for Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and Todd Young (R-IN), and Representative Suzan DelBene (D-WA)’s legislation to incentivize states, localities, and nonprofit organizations to experiment with portable benefits models.
Individuals, nonprofit organizations, and community foundations can endorse legislation and public agencies, while independent and family foundations cannot. If you are uncertain if you can endorse this bill, GIA provides an overview of who can and cannot endorse legislation here.
The landscape of work is rapidly changing. A rise in the number of independent contractors and freelance workers, and “work” opportunities through such avenues continue to increase compared to more traditional employer-employee arrangements. This shift has reshaped the employment landscape, introducing new complexities and challenges. To ensure artists and other independent workers do not lose out, GIA has been advocating for policies and practices to ensure equity in access to benefits for all workers. Benefits tied to employment is a historic relic meant to prevent people of color from accessing health insurance and other benefits. This relic discourages entrepreneurship and risk-taking, encourages job lock, and has racialized outcomes. As we shared in a blog post from January, between 10-30% of workers are independent contractors or gig workers — in other words, self-employed and contracted to perform work for or provide services to another entity as a nonemployee. Many artists fall into this category and, under current employment law and practice, they do not qualify for employer-based benefits such as health care and paid leave.
Due to this inequity, Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA) has been urging federal policymakers to ensure that independent workers have access to many of the same benefits enjoyed by workers directly employed by organizations and companies. We know that individuals who are not direct employees of organizations or companies, but instead do contract work for such entities, lose out on the benefits that many of us get through more traditional employee/employer relationships. These benefits such as sick leave, unemployment insurance, and others do not apply to contract workers. This leaves individuals at a disadvantage when they need to care for a sick family member or during an economic downturn.
In light of our advocacy push, and the voices of others, we are very excited to share that Senators Mark Warner (D-VA) and Todd Young (R-IN) and Representative Suzan DelBene (D-WA) have reintroduced the Portable Benefits for Independent Workers Pilot Program Act. The Portable Benefits for Independent Workers Pilot Program Act would establish a portable benefits pilot program at the U.S. Department of Labor. The bill authorizes $20 million for competitive grants to States, local governments and nonprofits to design, implement and evaluate new models or assess, and improve existing models for portable benefits for independent workers such as contractors, temporary workers and self-employed workers. Eligible models should provide any number of work-related benefits and protections – such as retirement savings, workers compensation, life or disability insurance, sick leave, training and educational benefits, health care, and more.
GIA strongly supports this legislation. The introduction of this legislation is only the first step to ensuring all workers have access to the benefits they deserve. We need more members of Congress to take up the cause of ensuring independent workers have access to workplace benefits so we can go beyond pilot projects, and ensure universal access to such benefits. GIA will be working with Senators Warner and Young, Representative Suzan DelBene and others to advance this legislation and other solutions to the problems faced by independent workers. If you can, we request that you urge your Member of the U.S. House of Representatives or your U.S. Senators to cosponsor the Representative DelBene or Senator. Warner bills respectively. If you are unable to take this step, we hope you will support your grantees to do so, and join us, them, and others in continuing to raise the visibility and importance of these issues, and uplift the voices of the arts community on these matters.
