The “gig economy,” in which people work as independent contractors on various projects, can be both a boon to workers and a problem.
It’s a problem when companies such as Lyft and Uber exploit workers, treating them as actual employees while refusing to bear the costs of bringing them on as employees—a savings of about 30% per worker.
It’s a boon when people either engage in those gigs as side hustles—earning a little extra side money during their free time—or when life circumstances prevent them from having a full-time job with the attendant full-time hours, such as certain medical conditions or disabilities. For example, my partner suffers from chronic migraines and can’t work in an office environment, but she has built herself a comfortable living through freelancing, working when she’s able to, on her own schedule. Many stay-at-home parents freelance, able to set their own hours around their parenting duties. There are even people who prefer the freedom that freelancing provides, the ability to set their own hours, work wherever they want, and take time off when warranted.
So that’s the challenge: How do you pass legislation that protects workers from being exploited, while not harming those who want that freedom?
Well, you don’t do it the way California did, the way New Jersey almost did, the way most Democratic presidential candidates, such as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders (explicit), are arguing, and the way other Democrats, such as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, want. In short, Democrats are fucking this up, and threatening to turn a key party demographic (educated creative-class professionals) against them. Not everyone wants or needs to be protected.
California kicked off this nonsense with AB5: Ostensibly targeted at companies such as Uber and Lyft that misclassify their independent contractors, the legislation cast a wide, arbitrary net. For example, bill author Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez capped the number of submissions a freelance writer can submit to a single publication at 35 per year. Why? No reason. Literally no reason. "Was it a little arbitrary?” she said. “Yeah. Writing bills with numbers like that are a little bit arbitrary.” No, not really. That arbitrary number, pulled out of nowhere, means death to the California newsweekly, the weekly columnist, cartoonists who aren’t part of a syndicate, anything of that sort. It means newspapers can’t have a weekly movie critic, or stringers that cover underserved communities, city council meetings, niche topics, and the like.
It means that we at Daily Kos had to make drastic changes to our own ways of featuring a wide range of voices, because it’s both economically unfeasible and operationally nonsensical to have occasional weekly voices as employees. It literally limits the voices that can be featured in the media landscape.
What about freelance photojournalists? Tough shit. Now, unless it’s through a national wire service, forget having access to a stable of freelancers that can expand your ability to cover niche topics, neighborhoods, and the like. Again, this limits voices.
Truckers already won the first legal skirmish, while a freelance journalism group has sued on First Amendment grounds. The original “gig” workers, musicians, are being screwed hard by the law—from rock bands to classical musicians to the entire recording industry.
If you think Gonzalez gives a shit—well, she doesn’t.
A copycat bill in the New Jersey legislature was thankfully killed at the end of the legislative session, in large part thanks to fierce lobbying by the state’s freelance writing community. But Democrats continue to pile on in support of this kind of legislation.
Is there a problem with misclassification of some employees? Absolutely. That shit needs to end.
But legislation addressing that problem needs to walk a narrow line between those who need and deserve protection and those who need or prefer freelance status and the perks that come with it.
Until that distinction can be properly made, Democrats need to cool it on this. They’re fucking it up. Destroying people’s livelihoods is not the way to build political support, and, in fact, it makes it easier for the likes of Uber to argue against any regulation at all.