An idiosyncratically idiotic new California law rightly has journalists across the country outraged. Signed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom last month, and set to take effect in the new year, Assembly Bill 5 bars specific industries from classifying workers as independent contractors.
Included in the Republican-opposed bill is a specific stipulation capping the total number of articles that freelance writers can be paid for at 35 per year. The short-sighted idea behind the bill was to force the creation of more formal employment in journalism, but of course, that isn’t going to happen. As you’d expect, the bill has instigated an uproar among the media.
As the media landscape continues to crunch over the next seven years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that staff employment of journalists will fall by 10% while freelancers will grow by 8%. Although freelance employment, given its lack of job security and regular benefits, may prove less palatable for those later in storied careers, freelancing is a godsend to students wishing to add to their portfolio, part-time parents who cannot write full-time, and journalists who find themselves between jobs.
In an ideal world, sure, journalism would have the same stability as law or finance. But with so few permanent positions available, and ever-higher barriers to entry in the journalism job market, freelancing serves as a necessary buffer for non-wealthy people to enter and stay in the profession. Moreover, full-time journalists are not being laid off because of freelancers. They’re losing their jobs because classified ads are free online, and people expect to read the news for free.
Only 3,430 Californians are formally employed as journalists. Presumably, there are about that many freelancers in addition. But 200,000 Californians drive for Uber and a staggering 325,000 drive for Lyft. This exact same bill will all but obliterate those drivers’ ability to work for ride-sharing gigs — in fact, their jobs were the bill’s intended target. Yet journalists didn’t care to voice their ire until they realized that this bill affected them directly.
Although Uber and Lyft have declared that they will not comply with the law, AB 5 is intended to force companies, such as ride-sharing apps, to classify their drivers as traditional employees rather than independent contractors if they fail a three-point test proving the following:
1. That the worker is “free from the control and direction of the contracting business entity in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact.”
2. That the worker “performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business.”
3. That the worker “is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as that involved in the work performed.”
Uber and Lyft both maintain that they can meet that burden of proof in court. But the question is why the state feels entitled to impose such a cost on an industry that has transformed its livability in the first place.
Ride-sharing apps provide as useful a financial safety net as freelancing but for an even greater number of people. With California freely giving illegal immigrants drivers licenses, the real cost of cars continuing to plummet across the country, and Southern California becoming ground zero for automating the auto industry (thanks to Tesla), the downward price pressure on a paid car ride is considerable. Even so, Uber and Lyft have managed to line the pockets of moms looking to earn extra cash while their kids are in school, as well as aspiring actors to make their rent in the comfort of their own cars instead of Hollywood diners.
The state is going to hurt journalists not already established at big media companies, but it is going to hurt a whole lot more car drivers. Both cases are egregious, and only narcissism could leave journalists outraged at the treatment they receive yet simultaneously unconcerned about the hundreds of thousands of drivers who could lose their jobs if this bill has its intended effect.
