Gig Economy Hearing Puts Platform Fees, Worker Flexibility in Crosshairs

Why it Matters

The House Small Business Committee convened a hearing on April 21, 2026, to examine whether the gig economy empowers entrepreneurs or traps small businesses in a cycle of platform dependency. The Trump administration's push to roll back Biden-era worker classification rules aligned squarely with the Republican majority's framing, but a restaurant owner's testimony about 30 percent delivery fees cut against the pro-platform narrative and handed Democrats a sharp line of attack.

The Big Picture

The hearing arrived weeks after the Trump Department of Labor proposed formally rescinding the Biden administration's 2024 independent contractor rule, which had made it harder for companies to classify workers as contractors. The administration stopped enforcing the rule in May 2025 and proposed full rescission in February 2026. The hearing also follows a 2024 House Education and Workforce Subcommittee hearing on portable benefits for independent contractors, suggesting a sustained, multi-committee Republican effort to build a legislative record.

In the Senate, Sen. Mike Lee introduced the 21st Century Worker Act in March 2026, which would simplify contractor classification rules. H.R. 100, the Protect the Gig Economy Act, is also pending in the 119th Congress. The April 2026 congressional hearing was designed to build the evidentiary record for both.

What They're Saying

The hearing's sharpest tension came not from the worker classification debate but from Rosa Thurnher, Owner, Aztec Travel Inc dba El Ponce https://app.legis1.com/witnesses/detail?id=82218&speakerId=82218#summary) testimony about platform power. She described a system in which her restaurant's visibility in search results dropped when she stopped paying for advertising, and in which she has no access to customer data. "The platform owns that relationship, not the restaurant," she said. "Data is currency, and that data is being withheld from the very businesses creating the value."

Kristin Sharp, CEO, Flex Association](https://app.legis1.com/witnesses/detail?id\=5863\&speakerId\=5863#summary said "App-based work is quietly one of the most powerful engines of entrepreneurship in the American economy today."

Thurnher said "Delivery platform fees can reach as high as 30%. That fundamentally changes whether a restaurant can survive."

Ranking Member Nydia Velázquez D-NY pressed Sharp directly on market concentration, asking how platforms ensure restaurants can address issues before their listings are demoted. Sharp, whose Flex Association represents major app-based platforms including Uber and DoorDash, emphasized worker satisfaction data: 83 percent of app-based workers would recommend the work to friends and family, and 90 percent cite flexibility as their primary reason for choosing it.

Velázquez also invoked the administration's own messaging, citing a White House photo opportunity featuring a DoorDash driver and noting the driver later launched a GoFundMe to cover her husband's cancer treatment costs. "She shouldn't have to make over 14,000 deliveries for her family to afford healthcare," Velázquez said.

Elaine Buxton, President and CEO of Confero Inc., a customer experience research firm, offered a different small business perspective. She argued that gig platforms allow her company to compete with larger firms by accessing specialized talent on a project-by-project basis. Her concern was regulatory, not structural: she described a patchwork of 50 inconsistent state labor laws and warned that the ABC test's "B prong," which asks whether a contractor's work is integral to the hiring company's business, creates an impossible standard for firms like hers that depend on research respondents.

Lisa Alvarez Acevedo, owner of Joyce Florist of Dallas, testified that her DoorDash partnership drove a 10 percent sales increase in its first year and generated over $60,000 in marketplace sales in 2025. Deliveries that once took half a day now arrive in roughly 30 minutes, freeing staff to focus on in-store operations during peak periods like Valentine's Day.

Political Stakes

The hearing is a vehicle for the Trump administration's deregulatory agenda on worker classification. The SBA's Office of Advocacy praised the proposed rescission of the Biden rule in March 2026, signaling close coordination between the administration and the committee's direction. Committee Chair Rep. Roger Williams (R-TX), a small business owner himself, has positioned the panel as a pro-entrepreneur body, and the hearing's title — "Independent Work, Real Opportunity" — reflects that framing.

For Democrats, the political terrain is difficult. The PRO Act, which would reclassify most gig workers as employees, has never passed the Senate. Velázquez and Vice Ranking Member Rep. Morgan McGarvey (D-KY) face a witness panel selected to reinforce the Republican narrative. Thurnher's testimony gave Democrats an unexpected opening, but her concerns centered on platform market power rather than worker classification — a distinction that complicates a unified Democratic message.

The Economic Policy Institute released a report on April 20, 2026, one day before the hearing, finding that social insurance systems can lose up to roughly 30 percent of per-worker revenue when workers are misclassified as contractors. Democrats cited that research, but it did not shift the hearing's overall direction.

The Other Side:

Thurnher's testimony complicated the majority's pro-platform framing. Her restaurant now derives 20 percent of its revenue from delivery platforms, up from 5 percent before the pandemic. "If I cut those ties, I lose a large share of my revenue every month," she said, describing a dependency that is difficult to exit. She also described being listed on Postmates without her consent after Uber acquired the platform. Her bottom line: "Right now, we could really use platforms that call us partners to act like partners."

The New York State Bar Association has noted that the current binary classification framework — employee or contractor — may no longer reflect the realities of modern work, a structural critique that neither party has yet translated into federal legislation.

The Bottom Line

The Labor Department's February 2026 proposed rescission of the Biden independent contractor rule is still working through the public comment process. The hearing record is likely to be cited in that rulemaking. A House companion to Sen. Lee's 21st Century Worker Act has not yet been introduced, but the Small Business Committee's April 2026 schedule suggests continued legislative activity on entrepreneurship and labor flexibility issues.

The hearing produced a split screen: platform advocates and satisfied small business owners on one side, and a restaurant owner describing a marketplace she described as neither fair nor transparent on the other — a divide that reflects exactly why Congress has failed to pass gig economy legislation for nearly two decades.

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