Written by Thomas Geiser
By now, most Californians are at least somewhat familiar with the disastrous Assembly Bill 5 (sponsored by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez), which reclassifies many independent contractors as employees. This bill was originally targeted towards companies like Uber and Lyft, who were perceived to be mistreating their workers.
However, the sweeping legislation has affected many other independent contractors like musicians, event planners, truckers, and freelance journalists. As a result of government overreach and poorly devised legislation, millions of working Californians are suffering.
Now, other Democrats across the country are considering similar legislation to punish companies who mistreat their independent contractors. Clearly they have not learned from AB 5’s immediate failure in California. Unrestrained government intervention in the free market has consequences. People are losing their jobs because companies cannot afford to make them full employees while the Democrats are patting themselves on the back for helping the “less fortunate.”
This is a lesson that Democrats consistently refuse to learn: actions have consequences. When the wording of a bill is excessively vague or overly ambitious it runs the risk of being misinterpreted or applied improperly. AB 5 has both of these issues, along with a fundamental misunderstanding of workers’ rights—namely to employ their skills and services as they see fit. Those decisions must be left up to individuals and families, not technocratic elites like Lorena Gonzalez.
Despite the negative consequences of AB 5 in California, Democrats in other states like New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and Washington are still interested in passing their own versions of AB 5. However, federal legislation already exists to handle situations where companies mistreat their independent contractors or intentionally misclassify workers.
The states already have the tools that they need to deal with these companies, so their new bills are nothing more than grandstanding demagoguery to appease Big Labor. If these other states are truly interested in helping the independent contractors, perhaps they should sit back and wait to see how the situation in California unfolds before they start to write their own devastating bills.
