The White House sent a Labor Day message from Director of the Office of Management and Budget Shaun Donovan about the many important issues affecting working Americans that will be decided in the next month of congressional budget negotiations. The message is well worth reading.

Donovan describes what he calls a “double-pronged attack on the workers we are celebrating today.” This attack includes deep cuts at the Wage and Hour Division, which protects workers against wage theft by crooked employers, and which collected $250 million in back pay for workers last year. Republicans also want limits on the use of third-party experts to accompany OSHA compliance officers on workplace safety inspections, where they can point out hazards OSHA might miss. They want to cut the budget and limit enforcement of the National Labor Relations Board’s rules to protect workers who join together for better working conditions. They want to block a new OSHA rule that will save thousands of workers from death, disabling lung disease, or cancer from inhaling silica dust. And they are trying to kill a new effort by the Department of Labor to protect retirees from financial advisors who put their own interests ahead of their clients’ interests.

None of the laws protecting working Americans from wage theft, on-the-job injury, unlawful retaliation, or self-dealing by financial advisors is meaningful if the government doesn’t enforce them. That takes resources and staff—investigators and lawyers who can take on big corporations or reckless businesses. Yet congressional Republicans want to cut funding for enforcement of all these laws. At OSHA, for example, Republicans want a 10 percent cut—$57 million, even though OSHA’s inspectors already can’t get to even one percent of workplaces in a year, and negligent employers put workers in harm’s way every day and kill nearly 100 employees a week.

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Last week’s decision by the National Labor Relations Board regarding Browning-Ferris Industries of California (BFI) is a big victory for working people and labor advocates. By holding that BFI is a joint employer with the staffing agency that provides all but a few of the workers at one of BFI’s recycling centers, the decision closes one of the many loopholes corporations use to avoid paying decent wages, Social Security and Medicare taxes, worker’s compensation premiums and unemployment insurance taxes, and to avoid even providing a safe workplace.

Millions of people work for employers that want their time, their sweat, and their creativity —but don’t want to treat them as employees. The companies have put middle-men between themselves and their workers and—– thanks to Reagan-era legal changes—have avoided their responsibilities, including the duty to recognize and bargain with employee unions. Now, after 30 years of watching corporations evade these obligations with the government’s blessing, the key labor agencies of the federal government are saying, “enough is enough.” The NLRB is following the lead of David Weil, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division administrator, who has begun cracking down on phony independent contractor arrangements.

This victory, like most labor victories these days, is bittersweet. On the one hand, whenever a government agency protects or expands the rights of workers to organize and bargain collectively, or holds a corporation accountable for its treatment of workers, it is a cause for celebration. On the other hand, all the BFI decision does is restore the law regarding joint employers to where it was until 1984. Things weren’t going all that well for the labor movement even before the Reagan era, and the BFI joint employer doctrine won’t level the playing field between workers and corporations. It just turns back the clock to a fairer set of rules.

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Recently, everyone from Hillary Clinton to the American Enterprise Institute  (AEI) has been focused on the “gig” economy—businesses like Uber and Taskrabbit that let consumers call up services on demand with their computers or phones. Despite all the attention these businesses have received, both AEI and the Wall Street Journal have pointed out that the gig economy supposedly has not shown up in Bureau of Labor Statistics job data. But while the on-demand economy has not appeared in government labor statistics—yet—that does not mean that it is not having an impact on people’s livelihoods. The rise of the gig economy is part of a wider trend that Yale political scientist Jacob Hacker has noted of risk being shifted from employers onto the backs of workers. New technologies have only accelerated this shift.

Drivers for Uber and Lyft, as well as most workers in the gig economy, are classified as independent contractors, despite the fact that their employers direct much of their work activities. Uber, for example, tells drivers where to pick up passengers and also deactivates drivers’ accounts if they consistently receive poor ratings from passengers. But because they are independent contractors, drivers are responsible for insuring their own vehicles, and the company does not provide them with health insurance, paid vacation, or retirement benefits. Independent contractors are also unable to file for unemployment compensation, must bear all of the cost of Social Security payroll taxes, and cannot file for workers’ compensation.

Ride-sharing is not the only part of the economy where workers are frequently misclassified as independent contractors, however. Misclassification happens throughout the economy, everywhere from construction to housecleaning to home health care. Across the board, this practice leads to lower wages and tax revenues, among other social costs.

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