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Law360 (June 14, 2022, 6:26 PM EDT) -- U.S. Department of Labor Secretary Marty Walsh during a congressional hearing on Tuesday backed the agency's approach to tackling workers' misclassification as independent contractors and employees' freedom to join unions, while also addressing job recovery.

During a four-hour testimony before the House Committee on Education and Labor to discuss the DOL's request for a $118 million increase in its 2023 budget, Walsh responded to several committee members who questioned the department's approach to regulating worker classification. He told the committee that the agency's goal is to protect workers, not work against companies.                                                                                                                                      "Nineteen million people don't choose to be independent contractors all across the board," Walsh said, responding to a question from Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y. "Some of those folks are being forced into those different jobs thinking that they were hired as employees. What we want to do is making sure that workers who do choose to work as independent contractors have the protections they have and workers who want to be employees should be treated as employees."

Overall, the DOL aims to snag $303 million for its budget, which would largely focus on registered apprenticeship opportunities and increasing work opportunities for underrepresented workers, especially women of color, according to the agency's budget proposal. President Joe Biden in March asked Congress in his annual budget request for an extra $2.2 billion for the DOL.

Stefanik suggested during her question to Walsh that the Fair Labor Standards Act should be updated, and the DOL should have kept a Trump-era rule regulating a worker's classification status in effect instead.

"If you truly wanted to address this misclassification, we should leave the Trump administration rule in effect as it provided clear rules for workers and employees on what constitutes an employer-employee relationship and when a worker is an independent contractor," Stefanik said.

In May 2021, the DOL delayed and eventually withdrew the rule Stefanik referenced, also known as the Independent Contractor Status Under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

A Texas district court ruled in March that the DOL didn't meet certain requirements when it delayed and withdrew the rule, saying it was in effect since President Donald Trump originally scheduled it to take effect on March 8, 2021. Although the DOL appealed that decision, the Fifth Circuit on Monday granted a pause on the appeal, allowing the agency to craft its own rule.

Trump introduced the rule in the final stretch of his presidency, seeking to give clarity to the economic realities test, a five-prong test that determines whether workers are independent contractors and are therefore not entitled to several legal protections and benefits, including minimum wage, overtime pay and paid sick leave.

The Trump-era rule encompassed the test, but it put particular emphasis on two factors weighing workers' control over their own work and the opportunity for profit or loss as a result of a personal stake in the business. If these factors point to the same conclusion, there is no need to explore further, according to the rule.

However, on Tuesday, Stefanik was not the only Republican member of Congress who was skeptical of the DOL's approach to workers' misclassification as independent contractors. Rep. Rick W. Allen R-Ga., who introduced the Employee Rights Act to protect independent contractors from "overreaching classification," said that the DOL is trying to blend independent contractors and employee statutes together under union agreements.

Rep. Diana Harshbarger, R-Tenn., also scolded Walsh, arguing that the sticker classification process would especially hurt trucking companies.

"I think it would be well served that you get into the research on who is really creating jobs in this country and who is really creating wealth in this country," Allen said. "This is really the momentum of the modern workforce, and we seem to be stuck in the past. Are you in favor of independent contractors continuing this process of creating jobs?"

Walsh didn't hold back, saying that he's in favor of entrepreneurship, but adding that during an October meeting at the White House, several representatives of the trucking industry shared concerns that independent truckers are not paid as much as they used to be.

"Any process that we do in independent contracting is not to put companies out of business, anything we do about independent contracting would be about protecting workers, protecting workers' rights, but also protecting the independence of companies who want to be independent contractors," Walsh said.

Harshbarger also pushed Walsh on the Biden administration's welcoming attitude toward unions regardless of workers' preference, saying it pushes truckers to decide between "being their own boss and being unionized," or face the opportunity for a certain pay only if they join a union.

But Walsh, who is the vice chair of the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment, rejected that take, saying "that's not the case" and that workers should be free to either join or not join a union.

--Additional reporting by Jon Steingart. Editing by Covey Son.