The Federalist Six Labor Days later, Assembly Bill 5 remains an adversarial law that handcuffs independent professionals’ ability to work as they choose.
This Labor Day marks nearly six years since Assembly Bill 5 was signed into law by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, upending the lives of freelancers, independent professionals, contractors, and small business owners across the state. What happened in California is spreading to other states like New Jersey. Policymakers should watch out that anti-“gig workers” laws and regulations, pushed by labor unions, don’t force independent contracting out of their states.
Five years after taking effect, Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5) remains an adversarial law that handcuffs independent professionals’ ability to work as they choose. It is a bane to small businesses and a drain on California’s economy. The unions’ target was the gig economy (e.g., Uber and Lyft) and the trucking industry. However, this neutron-bomb of a law affected more than 600 professions, according to its critics. It disrupted or displaced the careers of between 600,000 and 3.5 million self-employed workers, independent contractors, and entrepreneurs overnight. This included journalists and writers, musicians, interpreters, nurse practitioners, and tutors — all professions where skill level, additional training, and often certifications are built over time and meticulously maintained.
The unexpected pushback against AB 5’s broad brush forced the legislature to expand the law’s exemptions to include roughly 100 professions in AB 2257, which was instituted a year later. In 2022, a majority of voters passed Proposition 22, which allowed app-based drivers and delivery services to remain independent contractors. However, Proposition 22 did not solve the issues created by AB 5.
“Nothing bugs me more than when I see written that, ‘AB5 was so bad that they had to pass an emergency bill to exempt a hundred professions,’ [then] people think, ‘Oh, problem solved.’ No, the problem is not solved,” said Karen Anderson, an independent writer in California and founder of the 18,000-member-strong Freelancers Against AB5. “All of those exemptions are smoke and mirrors, and they come with fine print, and between six, to 12, to 13 caveats and hoops that you have to jump through.”
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