LOS ANGELES—In the final day of its 2020 session, the California state legislature on Monday passed new legislation that would give some relief to freelance workers in California’s “gig economy” whose ability to earn income had been threatened by last year’s controversial AB5 law. The new bill, AB2257, sailed through the state assembly 74-0 (with five members not voting), and the Senate 39-0 (with one non-vote).
Under AB5, most gig workers — including in the adult industry — would have been reclassified from “independent contractors” to “employees.” With few companies willing to hire their gig workers on an “employee” basis, that effectively could have put large sectors of the California labor force out of work.
As AVN reported earlier this year, at least some camming platforms had banned California performers, to avoid any confusion over whether the performers must be deemed “employees,” subject to the legal protections and benefuts of any full or part-time salaried company worker.
But under the AB2257 provisions, numerous categories of independent workers are now largely exempt from the “employee” reclassification — including “performance artists,” the category that would appear to apply to adult performers.
The new law, which must still receive a signature from Governor Gavin Newsom before taking effect, exempts “an individual performance artist performing material that is their original work and creative in character and the result of which depends primarily on the individual’s invention, imagination, or talent,” from reclassification.
But the bill does set certain conditions for the exemption. Under the provisions, the performer must remain “free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work, both as a matter of contract and in fact.”
She or he must also retain “rights to their intellectual property that was created in connection with the performance,” and be “free to accept or reject each individual performance engagement without being penalized in any form by the hiring entity” — among other requirements.
Other categories of artists and content creators will also be freed of most AB5 reclassification requirements, assuming Newsom does not veto the bill — a prospect which appears unlikely.
Freelance journalists were previously restricted to publishing no more than 35 articles per year with a single outlet. But that restriction is lifted under AB2257. Freelance music industry artists and workers, including “recording artists, songwriters, producers, promoters” and others are also now mostly exempt form reclassification, according to an analysis by the site LAist.
The main targets of AB5, however, were ride-sharing companies, such as the two industry giants Uber and Lyft. That industry remains subject to the provisions of AB5. After a judge in August ruled that the companies must reclassify their drivers as employees, the two ridesharing firms said that they would cease operating in California.
But on August 20, a state appeals court granted Uber and Lyft an extension of the time required to begin complying with the AB5 requirements, allowing the ridesharing companies to continue operations, at least for the near future.
Photo By David Monniaux / Wikimedia Commons
