Los Angeles Times: California businesses will soon face new limits in their use of independent contractors under a closely watched proposal signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday, a decision praised by organized labor but unlikely to quell a growing debate over the rules and nature of work in the 21st century economy.
3 comments:
Before coming to CMU, I worked as a light board operator for a year and a half and definitely felt some of the pressures of being an independent contractor. Though New Hampshire's state motto is "Live free or die" and their laws often follow that mindset, I still had to jump through quite a few hoops to be established as a contractor, and I wasn't even worried about getting insurance. It's kind of obvious that laws like AB5 don't work with the entertainment industry because not everyone wants to go through the process of making their services a complete business and would rather be considered "freelance". However, I think that even if the arts might be relatively unaffected by these laws, it is still really important to consider how the economy as a whole would be effected. One of the first things that my mind jumps to is the fact that if Uber drivers are hired as full time employees, it would remove the freedom that draws people to be drivers. Uber would also likely reduce their number of drivers to reduce overall costs, which would increase the cost of rides and might ultimately result in the end of what makes the app so useful. Though security and insurance and good working conditions are so important for employees' wellbeing, unless corporations and executives suddenly decide they are fine with giving up part of their giant checks for people to have a stable job, this likely won't end well for "private contractors".
This article shows how decisions that the founding fathers still debated about. The love how independent states are but sometimes I wish that employment law and union regulations were less state-based and more universal because this law limiting the miss-classifications of people’s employee status. This will be great so companies can’t jip workers from benefits that they need and deserve. This also will allow for much more job security, which is very helpful for a lot of independent contractors and freelancers. This law also shows how much this economy is an employee’s economy it is right now. This legislation targeting uber, lyft and doordash is great because this is a thriving economic sector that hasn’t existed in such strength a lot in the past and hasn’t had good legislation around it. It is incredible to see that the politicians are actually keeping up with the times in California. This law would help Mitchell as from what he said in his comment, he should have been an employee and not an independent contractor because the company dictates his hours so this law would have pointed out the miss-classification.
This new bill is going to cause a lot of problems. This isn’t to say that those problems are bad, they are simply put, new problems, problems that haven’t had to be faced before and with them will be confusion. Under this new bill it does appear that many companies will have to figure out new structures for practice. This will also inadvertently affect the consumer as well. I prime example and one that was mentioned in this article is services like Uber, DoorDash, GrubHub, etc. I don’t know how they classify the people that drive but if they are not already classified as employees, then this bill will cause problems for the users of these services. With being an employee means much more expenses for the company and if this is true, the people driving are no longer just people picking up a side job but rather are part of the company. This may cause problems for those whom don’t perform services as regularly but nonetheless with higher expense costs to the company means higher prices to the consumer to reflect the newfound value of those employees. I do hope that the bill was carefully looked at because a bill like this could change the direction of our future. One that moves away from the mobile tech and convenience industry to amp up the traditional companies.
Post a Comment