California passes bill to remake gig economy

App-based services to treat freelancers as employees

SACRAMENTO, CALIF.— California legislators approved a landmark bill Tuesday that requires companies like Uber and Lyft to treat contract workers as employees, a move that could reshape the gig economy and that adds fuel to a years-long debate over whether the nature of work has become too insecure.

The bill passed in a 29-11 vote in the state Senate and will apply to appbased companies, despite their efforts to negotiate an exemption. The Democrat-led state Assembly passed the bill Wednesday, which means it now gets sent to California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, who endorsed the bill this month and is expected to sign it. Under the measure, which would go into effect Jan. 1, workers must be designated as employees instead of contractors if a company exerts control over how they perform their tasks or if their work is part of a company’s regular business.

The bill may influence other states. A coalition of labour groups is pushing similar legislation in New York, and bills in Washington state and Oregon that were similar to California’s but failed to advance could see renewed momentum. New York City passed a minimum wage for ride-hailing drivers last year but did not try to classify them as employees.

In California, the legislation will affect at least one million workers who have been on the receiving end of a decades-long trend of outsourcing and franchising work, making employerworker relationships more arm’slength. Many people have been pushed into contractor status with no access to basic protections like a minimum wage and unemployment insurance. Ridehailing drivers, food-delivery couriers, janitors, construction workers and franchise owners could now all be reclassified as employees.

But the bill’s passage, which codifies and extends a 2018 California Supreme Court ruling, threatens gig economy companies like Uber and Lyft. The ride-hailing firms — along with appbased services that offer food delivery, home repairs and dog-walking services

— have built their businesses on inexpensive, independent labour. Uber and Lyft, which have hundreds of thousands of drivers in California, have said contract work provides people with flexibility. They have warned that recognizing drivers as employees could destroy their businesses.

“It will have major reverberations around the country,” said David Weil, a top Labor Department official during the Obama administration and the author of a book on the so-called fissuring of the workplace.

California legislators said the bill, known as Assembly Bill 5 and proposed by state Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, a Democrat, would set the tone for the future of work.

“Today the so-called gig companies present themselves as the innovative future of tomorrow, a future where companies don’t pay Social Security or Medicare,” said state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo, a Democrat. “Let’s be clear: there is nothing innovative about underpaying someone for their labour.”

Ride-hailing drivers hailed the bill’s passage. “I am so proud of ride-share drivers who took time out of their lives to share their stories, stand up, speak to legislators and hope they take a moment to bask in a victory,” said Rebecca Stack-Martinez, a driver and an organizer with the group Gig Workers Rising.

Uber did not immediately have a comment. Earlier on Tuesday, it laid off 435 workers in its product and engineering teams, the company’s second round of cuts in recent months.

Lyft said it was disappointed. “Today, our state’s political leadership missed an important opportunity to support the overwhelming majority of rideshare drivers who want a thoughtful solution that balances flexibility with an earnings standard and benefits,” said Adrian Durbin, a Lyft spokesman.

Gig-type work has been under the spotlight for years as companies like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash in the United States have grown into behemoths even as the contractors they relied on did not receive the benefits or minimum pay guaranteed to employees. Many of the companies have worked assiduously to beat back efforts to classify their workers as employees, settling class-action lawsuits from drivers and securing exemptions from rules that might have threatened the drivers’ freelancer status.

While regulators in California and at least three other states — New York, Alaska and Oregon — had found that ride-hailing drivers were employees under state laws for narrow purposes, like eligibility for unemployment insurance, those findings could be overridden by state laws explicitly deeming the drivers as contractors.

But more recently, the tide began changing. Two federal proposals introduced since 2018 have sought to redefine the way workers are classified to allow more of them to unionize. Those proposals have received support from candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, including Sens. Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

A critical question is how gig economy companies will react to California’s new law. Industry officials have estimated that having to rely on employees rather than contractors raises costs by 20 to 30 per cent.

Uber, Lyft and DoorDash have pledged to spend $90 million to support a ballot initiative that would essentially exempt them from the legislation.

Uber has also said it will litigate misclassification claims from drivers in arbitration and press lawmakers to consider a separate bill that could exempt them from AB 5’s impact when the legislative session begins in January.

California cities will have ways to enforce the new law. In lastminute amendments to the measure, legislators gave large cities the right to sue companies that don’t comply.