By The Editorial Board
April 19, 2020
The coronavirus pandemic has brought into clearer focus the flaws and failures of existing laws in California and across the country. Assembly Bill 5, already an evidently flawed and counterproductive law, has and will continue to hinder economic opportunities for workers across California who want the flexibility of gig work. We continue to call on Sacramento to repeal this onerous law.
The law …. restricts the conditions under which workers can enter into contract work with employers.
While rideshare companies such as Uber and Lyft became a stand-in for the sort of companies and work impacted by AB5, the far reach of the law has only been made more apparent with time.
Californians in lines of work as varied as music, translating, writing and trucking have found themselves negatively impacted by the law.
While the law has been defended as pro-worker, the reality is that AB5 makes it harder for workers who want the freedom to voluntarily engage in contract work to do so.
The practical consequence for many workers has been for them to go from being workers doing what they want to do on the terms they want to no longer being able to work.
Businesses big and small have had to adjust to the law, often by ending relationships with workers, not because they want to but because the costs of complying with the law are impossible to undertake. …
…. The flaws of AB5 are made perfectly clear by the fact that the law, which already contains several narrowly targeted exemptions for certain lines of work, continues to be the subject of promises for further exemptions.
If a law needs numerous exemptions to make sense, it probably doesn’t make sense.
With the long-term impact of the coronavirus pandemic likely to drag on for some time, laws like AB5 will only make California’s economic recovery much harder, while artificially restricting the nature of work for Californians.
We continue to urge its repeal.
Click here to read the entire editorial published in The Orange County Register.