California’s New ‘Gig Worker’ Law Will Hurt Freelancers

California’s New ‘Gig Worker’ Law Will Hurt Freelancers

California’s New ‘Gig Worker’ Law Will Hurt Freelancers

Intended to protect Uber, Lyft, and other exploited contract workers, the new statute will severely damage writers, photographers, and artists.

Facebook
Twitter
Email
Flipboard
Pocket

There’s a lot to choose from regarding the Signal for this column: There’s the ongoing fallout from Trump’s assassination of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani—from missile strikes on US bases in Iraq to the apoplectic response of Republican Senators Mike Lee and Rand Paul to the administration’s end-run around Congress’s war-making powers. Alienating key GOP senators might not be the smartest strategy now for Trump, who awaits a Senate trial after his House impeachment. In fact, it could be as dumb as assassinating the second most powerful man in Iran in order to promote world peace.

But, like the Senate trial, the Iran misadventure is probably going to dominate the news cycle in the coming weeks, so here are some other things worth paying attention to.

On the good-news front: After two federal appeals courts struck down lower-court injunctions blocking the administration’s new “public charge” rules for immigrants and would-be immigrants late last year, on Wednesday a New York appeals court upheld the third nationwide injunction. It largely got lost in all the Noise, but this ruling means that for now, the administration remains blocked in its efforts to use regulatory “reforms” to enact a wholesale restructuring of US immigration priorities to favor the affluent and lock out the poor.

Jenny Rejeske, interim advocacy director of the National Immigration Law Center, explained the Trump/Stephen Miller public charge effort as being “about sending one message: If you’re not white and you’re not wealthy, you’re not welcome. That’s against the law and, more importantly, it’s wrong.” At least some courts have reached the same conclusion.

On the bad-news front: California’s poorly worded AB5, a law ostensibly intended to rein in huge companies like Uber and Lyft, which have exploited vast pools of contract laborers in lieu of benefited employees, kicked in on January 1. The law has a good intent: to protect these workers and others like them by reclassifying them as employees entitled to benefits rather than as independent contractors. But the law will also affect self-employed people across the economic spectrum. For example, it limits freelance writers to 35 contributions per year to any one publication, thus at a stroke putting all columnists, weekly cartoonists, etc. at risk.

Many groups with powerful lobbies behind them, such as doctors, managed to carve out exemptions in the wording of the bill; and Uber itself is largely refusing to cooperate with the new law, banking on its ability to overturn it via ballot initiative later this year. However, many other, less well-represented groups, including artists, writers, photographers, and other staples of California’s creative economy, did not get exemptions. They now find themselves on the wrong end of AB5, looking to the courts for legal redress.

This week, independent truckers secured an emergency temporary restraining order so they could keep driving in California. But a judge in Los Angeles refused to issue similar relief on behalf of freelance writers and photographers. So unless another court rules on their behalf, thousands of writers and artists in the state (disclosure: I live in California) could end up having to massively reduce their workloads so as not to run afoul of these new regulations. This ill-considered law will end up economically hobbling huge numbers of freelance and self-employed workers.

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

I urge you to stand with The Nation and donate today.

Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

Ad Policy
x