H.R. 1319 — Modern Worker Empowerment Act

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What It Does

This bill rewrites the legal test for determining whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor under two major federal labor laws — the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). It establishes a two-part test that tilts heavily toward independent contractor status, and explicitly prohibits certain common factors from ever being used to classify someone as an employee. The practical effect is to make it significantly harder to reclassify gig workers, truckers, and other contract workers as employees entitled to minimum wage, overtime, and collective bargaining rights.

Codifies a two-prong independent contractor test: (1) the hiring party does not exercise 'significant control' over how work is performed, and (2) the worker has 'opportunities and risks inherent with entrepreneurship' such as managerial discretion or business judgment.

Explicitly prohibits four factors from ever being used to find employee status: compliance with legal/regulatory requirements, compliance with stricter health and safety standards, being required to carry insurance, and being required to meet contractual performance standards like deadlines.

Applies the same independent contractor standard to the NLRA, stripping workers classified as contractors of collective bargaining rights under that law.

Takes effect immediately upon enactment for all new classification determinations.

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Who Benefits

• Gig economy platform companies (Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Instacart) that rely on independent contractor classification to avoid paying benefits, overtime, and payroll taxes.

Large logistics and trucking companies that use owner-operator models to shift operating costs onto drivers.

Any business that contracts out labor-intensive work and wants a durable federal shield against reclassification lawsuits.

Staffing and franchise industries that deploy workers under contract arrangements.

Companies currently facing NLRB or DOL enforcement actions based on prior broader employee classification standards.

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Who Gets Hurt

• Gig workers (rideshare drivers, delivery workers, freelancers) who would lose access to minimum wage, overtime, and workers' compensation protections that employee status provides.

Workers required by their contracting company to carry their own insurance and meet strict deadlines — the bill explicitly says those requirements cannot count as evidence of an employment relationship, even when they functionally are.

Workers in industries with high injury rates (construction, trucking) who would be denied OSHA-related protections tied to employee status.

Any worker seeking to organize under the NLRA — independent contractors have no right to collectively bargain, and this bill expands who qualifies as a contractor.

State and local governments that have enacted broader worker protection laws, which could be preempted or undermined by a more permissive federal baseline.

The federal treasury and Social Security/Medicare trust funds, which lose payroll tax revenue when workers are classified as contractors.

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Hidden Riders

The bill prohibits using a company's imposition of stricter health and safety standards as evidence of employment — this effectively allows companies to impose extensive safety controls without those controls triggering employee status, removing a key real-world indicator of economic dependence.

The ban on using 'compliance with legal, statutory, or regulatory requirements' as an employment factor is remarkably broad — a company could mandate that a worker obtain specific government licenses, follow detailed operational rules, and comply with company-specific regulatory interpretations, all without that counting as control over the worker.

The 'performance standards such as deadlines' exclusion is explicitly labeled as merely an example ('such as'), meaning courts could extend this prohibition to other performance controls not named in the bill, creating an open-ended shield against classification.

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Framing Analysis

Called the 'Modern Worker Empowerment Act' — the bill does not expand any worker's affirmative rights; it reduces the number of workers eligible for existing federal protections by making contractor status easier to assign.

Framed as 'clarifying' the employee standard — in practice, it replaces the multi-factor 'economic reality' test used by the DOL and courts with a narrower two-prong test, and hardcodes four off-limits factors, which is a substantive restriction, not a clarification.

Sponsors describe it as giving workers flexibility and entrepreneurial freedom — the bill is silent on worker choice; it determines classification based on how the hiring company structures the relationship, not whether the worker actually wants contractor status.

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Red Flags

⚑The two-prong test focuses heavily on 'significant control over details' — courts have long recognized that sophisticated employers can avoid exercising visible control while still maintaining economic dominance, meaning the test may be easy to satisfy on paper while leaving workers functionally dependent.

⚑The four prohibited factors in Section 2(B) are mandatory exclusions — judges and agencies lose all discretion to weigh these factors even in cases where they are clearly probative of an employment relationship, which is an unusual and aggressive constraint on adjudicatory fact-finding.

⚑'Opportunities and risks inherent with entrepreneurship' is undefined — this vague standard will generate years of litigation before it settles, creating uncertainty for workers and businesses alike.

⚑Applies to both FLSA and NLRA simultaneously — a single classification determination now governs minimum wage, overtime, AND collective bargaining rights, meaning a worker losing employee status loses multiple layers of protection at once.

⚑Effective immediately upon enactment with no phase-in — workers currently in active DOL or NLRB proceedings, or litigation, could have their status retroactively affected by the new standard.

⚑No severability clause is visible in the bill text — if one provision is struck down in court, it is unclear whether the rest of the amendment would survive.

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Current Status

H.R.

1319 was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on February 13, 2025, and referred to the House Committee on Education and Workforce. On February 20, 2026, the committee reported the bill with an amendment (Report No. 119-505) and ordered it committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union, meaning it is advancing toward a full House floor vote but has not yet been voted on by the full chamber. The bill has not been considered by the Senate.

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