California's Gig Economy Is Under Attack. "Companies can simply blacklist California writers and work with writers in other states, and that's exactly what's happening."

Reason ^ | March 5, 2020 | Billy Binion

[karpov]

A new California law intended to force employers to hire workers as employees rather than treat them as contractors is killing freelance jobs across the Golden State and leaving those contractors in limbo.

Assembly Bill 5 (A.B. 5), which took effect January 1, was drafted in response to Dynamex Operations West Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles, a landmark court case that established a three-pronged test to determine whether companies are correctly classifying employees and contractors. That test says that contractors must control their workload, not perform work within the business's primary scope of operations, and be "customarily engaged" in the occupation.

Under the law, ride-share companies such as Uber and Lyft will have to reclassify their hundreds of thousands of California drivers as employees, pay them the legal minimum wage, and provide them with health care, paid time off, reimbursement for expenses, and other benefits.

"California is home to more millionaires and billionaires than anywhere else in the United States. But we also have the highest poverty rate in the country," Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D–San Diego), the architect of the law, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed last year. "One contributing factor is we have allowed a great many companies—including 'gig' companies such as Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Handy and others—to rely on a contract workforce, which enables them to skirt labor laws, exploit working people and leave taxpayers holding the bag."

Experts in the ride-sharing industry estimate that labor costs will rise by 20–30 percent. As of now, Uber and Lyft are refusing to comply, in hopes that pending litigation or a potential November ballot measure may preserve their existing business model. If that fails, they would likely be forced to begin scheduling workers in shifts, limiting employee hours, and otherwise stripping driver jobs of the flexibility

[Junk Silver]

It’s not just writers. I’m friends with some free-lance musicians in California. This law is going to destroy their work in musical theater, since pit musicians inevitably end up performing enough services to cross the threshold, and most theaters can’t deal with the added expense.

This economic train-wreck, along with the homeless crisis, provides a great opening for conservatives to make inroads in California politics.

[gibsonguy]

FR and the rest of our friends need to move to AZ and take it back to being solid red. Then build the wall on CA’s eastern border.

[Federal46]

“I’m from the government and I’m here to help”.

[pgyanke]

"California is home to more millionaires and billionaires than anywhere else in the United States. But we also have the highest poverty rate in the country," Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D–San Diego), the architect of the law, wrote in a Washington Post op-ed last year. "One contributing factor is we have allowed a great many companies—including 'gig' companies such as Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Handy and others—to rely on a contract workforce, which enables them to skirt labor laws, exploit working people and leave taxpayers holding the bag."

Stupid is as stupid does. The 'gig' economy is in response to labor laws and other idiocy that makes having full-time employees untenable. What to do? Get rid of the 'gigs' and let people starve.

[SaxxonWoods]

If it kills freedom, Democrats are for it.

Central Planning, baby.

[FamiliarFace]

A new California law intended to _________________ is killing _________________ .
Fill in the blanks with almost anything that CA decides they should regulate. They mess it up so badly pretty much every time.

[ConservativeMind]

LOL! This is so screwed up.

California is freaking crazy.

[srmanuel]

As a computer engineer, I spent over 10 years as a freelancer....

I went from one project to another a lot times with ATT or Cisco Systems...

Personally I preferred it that way, my wife and I had our own health insurance so I always declined company insurance just so I could leave anytime I wanted and still keep my benefits...

I negotiated my own pay, usually by the hour for 40 hour week and time and half for overtime...plus travel expenses....

It’s not for everyone, but I could usually earn more in 6-8 months versus a full time employee for some corporation....

California is going to kill this type of employment for thousands in the high tech sector in California, not that they really care....

[eyeamok]

Let's change one description and see how the affected react.

"One contributing factor is we have allowed a great many companies—including 'gig' companies such as Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Handy and others—to rely on a contract Illegal Alien workforce, which enables them to skirt labor laws, exploit working people and leave taxpayers holding the bag."

Hypocrisy anyone??

[Darteaus94025]

Become a serf, or die.

[texas booster]

...But we also have the highest poverty rate in the country

You have the highest poverty rate since you import illegals from multiple countries, and knowingly take a blind eye to the welfare fraud they commit.

And then you rig the statistics so that government aid does not show up on poverty statistics. Nor do cash jobs.

[MarkL]

Because of federal laws, an entire new industry popped up just to “certify” workers as contractors, but if CA made it even worse, I can only imagine how bad it will be, so I completely understand them wanting to hire out-of-state contractors.

It took a former employer of mine nearly a month to straighten things out when the company I worked for was contracted to provide education services to a customer. The company that supposed to certify that I was a contractor kept insisting that I was actually an employee of the company where I was to teach a class.

The problem was that I worked for an education center that taught classes on Novell networking. The customer was Novell corporate HQ, which needed me to teach a class (I was one of only 3 instructors in the US certified to teach the class at the time.) Because the course materials were being supplied by Novell, and the company I worked for was a certified Novell Education center, by purchasing the course materials directly from Novell, and if I taught the class at Novell’s Herndon, VA corporate office, it was claimed that I was an employee of Novell.

In order to teach the class without being classified as a Novell employee, Novell had to rent a room at a nearby hotel for the class, and where Novell could have simply provided the course materials for themselves, we had to charge them full retail price on the course materials, because my company, which COULD HAVE bought the materials directly from Novell at a discount, had to buy them at full retail price from another education center.

Mark

[VTenigma]

Assemblywoman

---

I believe I have isolated the problem.

[SunkenCiv]

Except for entertainment industry nitwits' hiring illegals as household slaves -- that is still unregulated.

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[Svartalfiar]

It’s not just writers. I’m friends with some free-lance musicians in California. This law is going to destroy their work in musical theater,

It's not just writers and musicians. The entire AV industry is based on using freelance labor. Many corporate meetings, conferences, conferences, etc are all using an AV company that has a large amount of people on shows, but can't keep them the rest of the year. Most of our full time staff is gonna be warehouse crews, project managers, sales guys, etc. The show crew is gonna be limited to audio/video/lighting leads, while the rest of the crew is almost always freelancers / labor companies. Speaking of, how does this affect labor companies? Showmasters, Reserve, IATSE, all of them ONLY provide labor to other companies. Not exactly freelance, but they aren't full/part-time either. How do they classify?

A lot of freelancers in this business WANT to be freelancers - you have the freedom to choose when to take a job, the freedom to work for multiple companies. You also get paid more - someone working a $4-500 day rate is gonna get dropped to maybe $20-30 per hour. That's a huge cut for probably less hours, just to get some PTO and health care? Maybe?