A driver sits in his truck as shipping containers are stacked up in the yards at the Port of Long Beach, California, November 17, 2021.

On December 27th, in the middle of the most news-less week of the year, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced that it was reconsidering the concept of who is really an independent contractor, and who is really an employee whose employer had misclassified him or her as a way of reducing wages and withholding benefits. The board invited briefs from interested parties as to whether the Trump-dominated NLRB’s ruling, which effectively limited the definition of “employee,” should be rejected in favor of an earlier, more realistic standard.

But a more fundamental challenge to the misclassification of American workers also looks to be in the offing. In a memo sent earlier last year to attorneys in the NLRB’s regional offices, the Board’s general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, asked them to submit cases to her that raised the question of whether the very act of misclassifying workers as independent contractors was itself a violation of the National Labor Relations Act—an unfair labor practice by virtue of denying workers the right to collective bargaining and a voice on the job.

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Should Abruzzo find that to be the case, and the now Biden-dominated board uphold her ruling, the implications for American workers could be profound. Today, when courts rule that a worker has been misclassified (as a series of rulings...

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