{"id":1317522,"date":"2020-01-03T22:20:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-04T05:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/reagan-column-workers-resist-californias-newest-bad-law\/"},"modified":"2020-01-03T22:20:00","modified_gmt":"2020-01-04T05:20:00","slug":"reagan-column-workers-resist-californias-newest-bad-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/reagan-column-workers-resist-californias-newest-bad-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Reagan column: Workers resist California\u2019s newest bad law"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I\u2019d like to see everyone have a happy and prosperous New Year.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m afraid a lot of freelancers and independent contractors in California are going to have it tough in 2020.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Democrat lawmakers in Sacramento, in fact, hundreds of thousands of part-time Uber drivers and freelance writers like me could lose their jobs or face drastic cuts in their incomes.<\/p>\n

The culprit is Assembly Bill 5, the \u201cprogressive\u201d new state law that rewrites the rules for part-time \u201cgig\u201d workers and forces companies to reclassify their independent contractors and turn them into full-time employees.<\/p>\n

As of Jan. 2, Uber and Lyft drivers, independent truckers, freelance writers, photographers, artists and musicians and the companies who hire their services have to abide by A\u20135.<\/p>\n

The law, which was originally concocted to destroy the business models of Uber and Lyft and has exemptions for 50 professions, is a cynical and transparent gift to unions from the same Democrats who have been wrecking my one-party state for decades.<\/p>\n

A\u20135\u2019s proud mother, leftwing Democrat Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego, claims it\u2019s intended to protect part-timers and freelancers from being \u201cexploited\u201d by their evil, greedy employers.<\/p>\n

Her law is supposed to provide independent contractors with the same benefits and workplace protections that full-time employees get and \u2013 most important to the Democrats \u2013 therefore make it possible for them to unionize.<\/p>\n

Given its leftist genes, it\u2019s not surprising that when A\u20135 was signed into law last September unions, progressives and the Uber-hating liberal media were equally thrilled.<\/p>\n

The liberal web site Vox, calling A\u20135\u2019s passage \u201ca historic moment\u201d for U.S. labor, ran the headline \u201cGig workers\u2019 win in California is a victory for workers everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ironically, however, Vox itself has become a victim of A\u20135.<\/p>\n

The law\u2019s many arbitrary and inflexible rules about who can work for whom and for how often include restricting freelance contractors at places like Vox from writing more than 35 columns or submissions per year.<\/p>\n

Until the other day, Vox\u2019s parent company, Vox Media, had about 200 part-time freelancers from California under contract to write for its sports blogging network, S\u2013Nation.<\/p>\n

The media company could have reclassified the California freelancers as full-time employees to comply with A\u20135, as it\u2019s in favor of forcing other companies to do.<\/p>\n

Instead, the hypocrites running Vox Media reportedly decided to replace 200 freelancers with just 20 new part-time and full-time staffers.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, A\u20135\u2019s completely arbitrary number of 35 contributions per year, per \u201cindependent contractor\u201d affects me, too.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still figuring out how to legally comply with law, but I can assure that I\u2019m not planning to move out of the state.<\/p>\n

The good news in this latest act of liberal political lunacy is that the legal experts say there will be years of court battles over the enforcement of AB5, which has been accused, correctly, of being \u201cirrational, vague and incoherent,\u201d not to mention unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

The resistance has already begun.<\/p>\n

The California Trucking Association has filed a lawsuit seeking an exemption for its 70,000 independent truckers.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week Uber and Postmates, the courier services provider, asked a federal court to block the law.<\/p>\n

And California\u2019s freelance photographers and writers are also seeking a restraining order, arguing that A\u20135\u2019s rules will destroy their livelihoods.<\/p>\n

I wish all the lawyers well in their fight against A\u20135, but in the long run, it\u2019s probably going take a U.S. Supreme Court decision to undo all its predictably bad and unintended consequences.<\/p>\n

Send comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com<\/a>. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019d like to see everyone have a happy and prosperous New Year. But I\u2019m afraid a lot of freelancers and independent contractors in California are going to have it tough in 2020. Thanks to Democrat lawmakers in Sacramento, in fact, hundreds of thousands of part-time Uber drivers and freelance writers like me could lose their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1317522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-06 06:30:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1317522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1317522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1317522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1317522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}