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For years, employers had access to a labor force where workers were so desperate that they’d take any job offer. The combination of poverty-level minimum wages, historically low unionization rates, at-will employment, worker misclassification, a battered safety net, a lack of paid time off or employer-sponsored benefits, and a host of other policies and practices have firmly tilted the scales toward employers, allowing for pervasive exploitation and abuse, particularly for the nearly 3 in 4 Americans living paycheck to paycheck even before the pandemic.

The situation is more dire after a job loss. Recently laid-off workers are likely to have almost no safety cushion — more than half of consumers had $3,000 or less in their checking and savings accounts combined in 2019. They may also have no access to unemployment benefits — just 28 percent of eligible unemployed workers in 2019 actually received benefits. That makes workers desperate for any job, no matter how terrible, that can help them scrape by. During a recession with mass layoffs, when millions are facing that same desperation, businesses have all the power to offer unsafe jobs in places like crowded meatpacking plants and bustling restaurant kitchens to overqualified applicants with meager compensation, unless the government intervenes.

Unemployment insurance, especially the enhanced benefits during the pandemic, gives workers breathing room. The benefits aren’t enough for people to live large — even with the extra $300 a week, unemployment benefits will fall noticeably short for a modest family budget in every county in the country. Benefits just let workers be slightly less desperate, alleviating the pressure to take unsafe jobs — many of which are especially dangerous during a pandemic — that pay poverty wages. Instead, they can hold out a bit longer for better-paying jobs that match their skills, education, experience, and interests.

One dishwasher, Jeremy, told journalist Eion Higgins that “the stimulus and unemployment benefits have definitely helped me be more picky about what jobs I’ll take since I don’t have to take anything I can get in order to cover rent and groceries.” Another, Alan, reported that “I have a degree in forestry and since I’m currently relatively financially secure I can take more time to find a job in the field that I actually want to work in.” A third, Owen, said “I left because having some time off to think and plan helped focus my desire to be paid better and treated better… I expect to make at least double and finally have nights and weekends off. Hopefully I’ll be treated with a little more dignity but I know that’s not always the case.”

This is very different than saying unemployment benefits are discouraging work in general. Studies of unemployment insurance have shown that laid-off workers who receive benefits search harder for jobs, receive better paying offers, and take roles that better match their education level. Specifically during the pandemic, several studies have looked at the $600 enhanced benefits and found that they had little to no effect on employment or job search. It’s hard to see how the current $300 boost would be any different.

Despite what many businesses, commentators, and lawmakers are trying to claim, the data is continuing to prove that unemployment insurance isn’t standing in the way of hiring. Though overall job growth in April was disappointing, the leisure and hospitality sector — where most of the cries of labor shortage from employers are coming from — actually accelerated job growth with 206,000 new hires in March and 366,000 in April. In total, 430,000 people joined the labor force (meaning they weren’t searching for work before but now are), but that growth came entirely from men while women actually left the labor force on net in April, suggesting that this has more to do with a continued lack of child care. States with higher unemployment benefit levels, as well as low-wage sectors where benefits are more often higher than previous income, have actually seen faster job growth, indicating that unemployment insurance isn’t the cause of slow hiring.

In reality, few workers even had access to unemployment insurance in the first place. From April 2020 to January 2021, only 18 percent of unemployed people had received unemployment benefits in the last two weeks at any one time. It’s been even worse for Black (13 percent) and Asian (11 percent) workers and those without a college degree (12 percent), all of whom are overrepresented in low-wage industries like leisure and hospitality. Undocumented immigrants are also totally excluded from unemployment insurance, yet they are 10 percent of restaurant workers nationwide and almost 40 percent in cities like New York and Los Angeles. We saw the consequences of this early in the pandemic when meatpacking plants convinced the government to declare them essential, allowing them to call their employees back into work and leading to large COVID outbreaks among their workforces, disproportionately made up of immigrants and people of color, and in communities where the plants are located.

Even so, employers have managed to complain loudly enough about the possibility that they may have lost a hint of power that sympathetic legislators are rushing to accommodate them. As of mid-May, in 16 states and counting, Republican governors had announced their plans to block all of their residents from receiving their rightful federal unemployment benefits, citing anecdotes of businesses struggling to hire at their current wages as justification. Ending those benefits before the jobs are there and while millions are still losing their jobs each month will take billions of dollars — over $10 billion from almost 2 million unemployed workers by one estimate — out of the economy in those states, even if some of those people cut off find work, and will effectively slow the recovery through decreased spending.

If there was a labor shortage, employers have common sense options to make themselves more competitive: They could raise wages to livable levels, as many businesses have found success doing, or pressure their lawmaker friends to support vaccination efforts and fund safe and affordable child care. Instead, some businesses are relying on half measures, such as offering one-time signing bonuses specifically because they know those are insignificant when compared to what a worker would earn long-term from permanently higher wages. Many others are simply pushing the same narrative they have fallen back on for more than a century — through the New Deal, the Great Society, welfare reform, and the Great Recession — by claiming workers who dare demand more are lazy and ungrateful. It’s not a coincidence that the same people shouting to end unemployment benefits now are also opposing the Raise the Wage Act, the PRO Act, and other measures that might materially improve the lives and build the power of workers.

This power struggle has made its way to the president’s desk. In a White House speech on Monday, President Biden said, “Anyone collecting unemployment who is offered a suitable job must take the job or lose their unemployment benefits.” (Emphasis added.) Now the government has to decide who gets to define “suitable.” Businesses would like it to mean the pre-COVID status quo: low wages, inconsistent hours, minimal (if any) benefits, and limited protections. Workers want it to mean that jobs are safe and offer a decent quality of life — including livable wages, manageable hours, and accommodations for caregiving and quality of life.

The Biden administration has taken some positive steps in defining a good job for federal contractors, setting a $15 minimum wage, raising standards, and strengthening anti-discrimination protections. It’s vital that the administration continue to support all workers in the face of overwhelming employer power. There’s no shortage of ways to do so: They can push to improve the unemployment insurance system through federalization or establishing minimum standards and automatic stabilizers, like those proposed in the Wyden-Bennet reform bill; pass the Raise the Wage Act to raise the minimum wage to $15 and eliminate subminimum wages; implement better regulations and enforcement to prevent wage theft, overtime abuse, misclassification, and OSHA safety violations, among other abuses; pass the PRO Act to ensure workers can exercise their right to come together in unions; and so much more.

We can’t continue to give employers all the power in the labor market. President Biden and other lawmakers must make it clear that now is the time to stand with workers and give them some say in their own working conditions and livelihoods.

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In November, Florida joined a long list of cities and states that have increased their minimum wage above the federal level of $7.25. Sixty-one percent of Floridians voted to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, a move that will bring more than 1 million residents out of poverty. However, the amendment left out a crucial group: the state’s 2 million independent contractors, who don’t fall under federal minimum wage regulations. For decades, Florida’s lack of protections for these workers has led to widespread misclassification and wage theft. Even as the state passes some of its most progressive wage legislation in decades, its exploitative independent contractor system threatens to undermine its endeavors and points to broader weak spots nationally.

Around 10 percent of the state’s population, or 2 million people, work as independent contractors — 40 percent more than the national average. Under the independent contractor framework, employers aren’t required to meet Fair Labor Standards Act requirements for minimum wage or unemployment insurance, or provide benefits. This is appealing to employers — benefits account for up to 30 percent of a worker’s salary, so employers can cut costs by reclassifying their workers as independent contractors. Offloading payroll taxes, which employers aren’t required to pay on behalf of contractors, save employers an additional 8 percent.

In theory, an independent contractor is paid for performing a specific role or completing a project. The payer can only determine the result of the project, not when or how a contractor completes the work. But because labelling workers as independent contractors saves employers so much money, workers are occasionally “misclassified,” or classified as independent contractors when they should be an employee.

While exact numbers of how many workers are misclassified are difficult to obtain, studies are very clear about misclassification’s results: Contractors in several low-wage industries earn less than their salaried peers. In construction, a field particularly prone to misclassification, independent contractors can make half as much as their counterparts on payroll.

Floridians are uniquely vulnerable to employment misclassification. Florida’s service-dependent economy has made it a particularly easy target for gig work companies, according to Alexis Davis, an analyst at the Florida Policy Institute. Roughly 1.3 million of Florida’s independent contractors are “employed” by gig work companies. Gig workers in Florida also belong to some of the state’s most at-risk groups. These workers are disproportionately people of color and 1 out of every 3 is an immigrant. Seniors, attracted by the flexibility and the need to augment their Social Security payments, also make up a large part of the state’s gig workers.

Sherri Wheeler Cliburn, 56, has been driving for Instacart since the delivery app launched in Sarasota four years ago. Like many gig workers, she was attracted to the flexible schedule and good pay that the app initially offered, which allowed her to spend time on tour with her son, who is a musician. But as the app grew in popularity, Instacart began to lower payouts across the board, forcing workers to rely on customers’ tips. And although Instacart sets a default tip for orders, Cliburn says customers will often file fake complaints to get out of paying tips, or even paying for the order at all. This leads to workers getting deactivated from the platform while the company sorts out the case.

“It could take anywhere from five to eight weeks for somebody from Instacart to get back with you,” says Cliburn. “Meanwhile, you’re deactivated. You’ve lost your income.”

Several other workers gave similar accounts to TalkPoverty from working with Uber, Lyft, and other gig platforms. While they appreciate the autonomy that the independent contractor framework grants them, when pay disputes emerge, they find themselves powerless in the face of the companies they work for. Ben E., who drives for Uber in the Tampa area, says that there were multiple occasions where Uber docked his pay without explanation, leading to a long process of negotiations with the company. Uber has not responded to a request for comment as of publication.

State law makes these abuses particularly hard to fight. Normally, a state’s Department of Labor would provide protection from misclassification and other labor abuses for workers, and handle concerns like minimum wage complaints. However, Florida’s Department of Labor was dismantled in the early 2000s by then-Governor Jeb Bush. Today, Florida is one of seven states with no minimum wage investigators.

In 2017, following a $750,000 lobbying campaign by Uber, the state legislature passed a bill that set a statewide regulations for ride-hailing apps. While the bill included limited regulations on insurance, its main goal was to preempt local legislation in Miami-Dade that would have put rideshare apps on the same regulatory field as taxi services. The bill also included provisions that doubled down on classifying drivers as independent contractors.

Cliburn felt this first-hand when she tried to file a complaint about Instacart’s delays and pay reductions, though she didn’t have misclassification in mind. She contacted the state, which told her that she would have to provide a slew of paperwork that proved her case. As Cliburn struggled to navigate through the process, it became apparent that the state had little incentive to assist her and that they viewed her complaint as a burden to be avoided. Cliburn says she struggled to get in contact with the state and that, when she did, they provided little-to-no support for filing her request. “Eventually I just said, screw it, because they don’t care here. I know other states do care about their workers but in Florida, they just don’t care,” Cliburn says.

While the future of federal minimum wage legislation remains uncertain, it’s clear that the current framework fails to address the needs of the large and growing gig worker contingent. That’s not to say there isn’t hope for this next challenge in worker rights. Several states and cities, including New York and Illinois, have passed additional protections for gig workers. In Seattle, drivers working for ride-hailing apps are now eligible for the city’s minimum wage and dispute resolution protections. And California’s landmark AB 5 would have reclassified many of the state’s gig workers as employees, giving them access to minimum wage regulations and unemployment. While the gains made by the law were undone by a ballot measure funded by Uber and other gig apps, the framework created by the bill could serve as a basis for similar legislation on a federal level.

What’s more, the Biden administration has also signaled that it is willing to take a tougher stance on misclassification, suggesting that meaningful change may be within sight.

During the course of his career, Scalia has denied the science behind repetitive stress injuries, prevented UPS drivers injured on the job from having the ability to form a class to sue, and — most outrageously — insisted that an employee at Ford Motor Company should soil themselves at work rather than be allowed the privacy to work from home.

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In the Ford case, Scalia defended the company against a claim that it had failed to accommodate a person with Irritable Bowel Syndrome. The plaintiff had requested telework as a reasonable accommodation, which the company refused and countered with an offer to move the employee’s cubicle closer to the restroom.

When the plaintiff explained that simply standing up could trigger a loss of bowel control, Scalia argued that they should have taken “self-help steps such as using Depends (a product specifically designed for incontinence) and bringing a change of clothes to the workplace.” In other words, when an employee asked for support, Scalia argued that she should wear a diaper and be ready to change her pants.

This is not just a case for me. It is personal. As a person who has lived with inflammatory bowel disease for 34 years, I have requested and received the accommodations cited in this case. It’s not unusual for me to need quick access to a bathroom four, six, or eight times during a workday. On the days when that number is higher, I take advantage of telework. On days when it’s lower, I come to the office confident that my disability will not keep me from the work I love. Not because I’m forced to wear Depends — which would put me at risk for complications from inflammation or infection — but because of laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act that protect my right to accommodations that work for me.

Scalia’s nomination has the potential to set back disability employment policy by decades. The Department of Labor has a critical role in driving policy on disability employment, helping make the workplace safer and more accessible, and helping move the needle away from subminimum wage employment.

It might be easy to dismiss this administration’s nomination of Scalia as just one more dangerous appointment competing for our attention. That’s not what I see here. What I see is a nominee who endangers every worker’s right to reasonable accommodations. Not just the 3 million Americans who live with bowel disease, but the more than 60 million Americans with disabilities who depend on the ADA to protect them from discrimination by employers.