The GigReporter

Assembly Bill A6664 (Referred to Labor March 5^th, 2025

Senate Bill S1514 (Passed March 4^th, 2025)

In an effort to thwart NYS Assembly Bill A6664, on behalf of itself and in the interest of the last mile courier and transportation industry in NYS, SCI met with Assembly Labor Chair Harry Bronson’s staff in the Capital on Monday May 5^th, 2025. The controversial bill is unprecedented in providing the NYS DOL with unfettered discretionary power to allege misclassification against any NYS business, with little or no investigation, with minimal time periods for notice, nor a workable ability for businesses to cure any defect. Furthermore, the bill is void of any clearly fair appeal rights, altogether calling into question business owners’ “due process” rights and ultimately calling into question the constitutionality of the bill itself.

While the DOL’s ability to offer Stop Work Orders does already exist in the realm of worker’s compensation, the DOL’s power is tethered by a requisite mandate for worker’s compensation insurance coverage or a failure to make payment on an existing default judgement after 90 days’ notice by NYS. Comparatively and absent on the bill, the worker’s compensation law is clear to state these factual circumstances are such a failure that it “shall be deemed an immediate serious danger to public health, safety, or welfare sufficient to justify service by the chair of a stop-work order on the employer, requiring the cessation of all business operations effective immediately…” While the WC law is forceful, it is clear and can arguably be said to provide sufficient time and remedies satisfying due process. In contrast, the legislature’s new efforts to grant the DOL with unfettered power to combat misclassification, the alleged employer is only provided with 3-days’ to address the alleged violation and forced compliance and only 10 days to appeal the discretionary ruling.

SCI left the meeting confident an open dialogue had begun and that productive conversations with Chair Bronson’s staff had occurred detailing the problematic issues with the bill. If New York is the first state to pass the controversial bill into law, it will undoubtedly be followed by litigation challenging the law’s ambiguity and constitutionality on due process grounds. Additionally, such heavy-handed legislation aimed to combat alleged misclassification of workers will undoubtedly not achieve its intended results to protect workers’ rights but rather has an opposite effect to lower total workforce by significant declines in both employment and independent contractor numbers as seen with California’s disastrous AB5 legislation, (a rigid ABC test for employment)[i].

[i] “Assessing The Impact of Worker Reclassification – Employment Outcomes Post-California AB5”, Liya Palagashvili, Paola A. Suarez, Christopher M. Kaiser, and Vitor Melo, Mercastus Center at George Mason University, Arlington, VA, January 2024.