The Guardian, September 19, 2019: Let’s Follow California’s Lead and Regulate Companies Like Uber
This week, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom – a darling of tech capitalists – signed Assembly Bill 5 (AB5) into law. The bill codifies the “ABC test” to determine the applicability of California employment laws and makes it harder for companies to get away with misclassifying workers as independent contractors. If properly enforced, AB5 will have enormous impacts for vulnerable workers in the trucking, janitorial and construction industries.
But across the world, the law has been most hailed as a regulatory check on the so-called “gig economy.” Indeed, the International Transport Workers’ Federation (a federation of 665 trade unions representing 18 million workers in 147 countries) has called on this California bill to be the inspiration for regulations governing gig work internationally.
AB5, however, does not reflect a stark legal shift, as its detractors have argued. Rather, the law standardizes the legal test for employee status under California law and gives greater power to city attorneys to enforce laws against companies (like Uber and Lyft) who would probably have been found in violation under past precedent. The test brings clarity for businesses and workers alike and limits the possibility of ideological decision-making.
What AB5 does reflect is a profound cultural shift in regulators’ relationship to and understanding of labor platforms. In the first few years of the app-labor frenzy, California’s regulatory approach to gig companies could best be described as either dereliction or negligent tech-bedazzlement.
