The New Jersey Business & Industry Association (NJBIA) has initiated a statewide grassroots campaign urging the Sherrill administration to delay the implementation of the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development’s controversial independent contractor rule.
With the regulatory change scheduled to take effect on Oct. 1, the NJBIA is pressing the administration to push the effective date back to July 1, 2027. The push follows an earlier 120-day stay imposed by Gov. Mikie Sherrill after the rule was officially codified on May 5, which was intended to allow time for legislative changes that have yet to materialize.
The regulation codifies a strict ABC test to determine worker classification, creating a legal presumption that a worker is an employee unless a business can prove all three prongs of the test. Under this standard, failing even a single prong designates the worker as an employee, overriding written agreements or 1099 statuses.
NJBIA Policy Analyst Jack Kelly pointed to the strict interpretation of “Prong B”—which mandates that a freelancer perform work outside the usual course of a business or outside its place of business—as a primary threat to modern project-based and app-based work.
“With so much at stake, so many unanswered questions to likely scenarios, few meaningful statutory changes, risks to both our gig economy and our business climate, and with a failed history of the same policy in California, we are respectfully asking the Sherrill administration to delay the implementation,” Kelly said.
Critics argue that applying a 1936 legal framework originally designed for workers’ compensation cases fails to accommodate the modern landscape of freelancing, consulting, and the gig economy. Last year’s initial proposal drew substantial pushback, including 9,500 public comments in opposition and public objections from two dozen bipartisan lawmakers.
Freelance workers, impacted businesses, and consumers can access the campaign’s submission form requesting the implementation delay at njbia.org/ABCDelay.
