Newsom doubles down on AB 5 disaster
We’re not even two weeks into this Assembly Bill 5 business and already, thousands of freelance journalists have found their livelihoods either eliminated or, at the very least, severely curtailed.
You know what hasn’t happened? Lots more full-time jobs with benefits, which was the bogus bill of goods put forward by the bill’s author, Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego).
Gee. It’s almost enough to make you wonder how nobody saw this coming.
Except, of course, we did. Along with almost every newspaper in this state, we warned about this exact scenario for several months. We said voices would be taken away, vital incomes would be lost and the ultimate losers would be the readers who have come to rely on these correspondents for much of their local news and commentary.
The new law says freelance journalists can contribute only 35 paid assignments per year. Any more than that, and they’d have to become full-time employees.
As anyone who is even remotely aware of the financial challenges faced by newspapers should have figured out 15 years ago, “adding additional full-time employees” is not a viable option.
(Gonzalez, apparently, has been too busy to notice.)
Like most newspapers, we rely heavily on freelancers. They provide a good amount of the news, commentary, lifestyle and sports coverage in this newspaper. And, yes, we have several who have provided content for us much more than 35 times a year — in a few cases, going back 20 years or more.
Now, we’ll have to tell them “Uh, about that weekly column. How does two or three a month sound instead?”
These are people who, in many cases, rely heavily on this extra income. Thanks to AB5, several of them are looking at about a 50 percent pay cut.
And those are the ones lucky enough to still be writing at all. Several big-name companies have sidestepped AB5 by laying off thousands of freelancers in our state. For example, Vox Media, which provides most of the content for SB Nation websites, told hundreds of freelancers in December that their work was no longer required. Oh, and have a Merry Christmas!
Who, exactly, is this bill supposed to be helping again?
By this point, you’d expect that the public outcry from our industry (and others) would have rattled some sense into the heads of our state lawmakers. Maybe they’d reconsider their hasty, farreaching law. Maybe they’d set aside some money to help the people they screwed over with their idiotic law.
Oh, they’ve set money aside, all right. But not to help anybody. Instead, they’re putting millions of dollars aside to double down on their mistake.
In the latest jaw-dropping development surrounding AB5, Governor Gavin Newsom has put roughly $20 million into his proposed 2020 budget for AB5 enforcement.
It includes $17.5 million for the Department of Industrial Relations to “address workload” and “investigations of labor law violations” related to worker status, wage claim filings and workplace health and safety inspections.
And, of course, when it comes to throwing around money for pet projects, Newsom’s just getting warmed up. The budget also includes $3.4 million for the Employment Development Department to train staff and administer the ABC Employment Test as mandated under AB5, and to conduct hearings and investigations on workers’ status. The Department of Justice gets $780,000 to “address increased enforcement actions.”
According to Politico, Newsom told reporters that AB5 “was state law” before AB5 was a legislative effort and “my job as (an) executive is to enforce the law.”
Oh, spare us, Mr. Governor. You’ve got a long, celebrated history of enforcing laws you agree with while ignoring others if it seems politically expedient to do so.
This fight isn’t over. Freelancers have filed a lawsuit alleging AB5 violates the First Amendment, and other industries caught up in this “Let’s get Uber and Lyft!” tidal-wave disaster have followed suit. Just last week, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ruled that AB5 does not apply to truckers because it is preempted by federal law.
Uber, Lyft and others, meanwhile, are suing the state and working on a ballot initiative to overturn AB5.
We’re sure all of this is catching the attention of Newsom, Gonzalez and some other state legislators. In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised if they’re looking for money to defeat that ballot initiative even as we speak.