LOS ANGELES—Without much fanfare, a series of exemptions to California’s controversial “worker reclassification” law, AB5, passed through the state Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday, on a unanimous, 7-0 vote, according to documents posted on the state legislature’s website. The new bill, AB2257, allows a specified list of workers in the “gig economy” to continue as independent contractors.
Under the original AB5, most independent workers would find themselves limited in the amount of work they could perform for any given client, unless the client hired them as full-time or part-time employees.
While many of the amendments are worded somewhat ambiguously, the new provision that would appear most relevant to performers in the adult industry exempts “an individual performance artist presenting 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.”
But those “performance artists” must show that they retain the rights to the intellectual property that stem from their work, as well setting their own terms of work. They must also be “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.” That "control and dircetion" extends to artistic control over the work, which the "performance artist" must also retain.
How those provisions affect adult or, for that matter, mainstream actors and performers who are generally subject to instructions from directors and producers — and may be required to sign over their intellectual property rights as part of a work-for-hire agreement — remains unclear.
The new bill also exempts photographers, videographers, and fine artists from the AB5 job reclassification requirements. Freelance writers, who were previously limited to producing no more than 35 pieces of content for any one client in a year, would now operate free of that constrain, if AB2257 is passed by the full state legislature.
The AB5 bill, authored by San Diego-area Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez — who is also the author of AB2257 — was primarily intended to address the issue of ride sharing services such as Uber and Lyft, who hire drivers on what often amounts to a full-time basis, but pay them as independent contractors without the benefits or protections offered to employees.
But the law also covered dozens of other worker categories, including most every type of worker in the gig economy, including performers, musicians, writers and many others.
At a February hearing of state Assembly Select Committee on Jobs and Innovation, several representatives of the adult industry spoke in opposition to AB5.
Justin Case, of the Adult Industry Laborers and Artists Association, told the state legislators that two camming platforms had already banned performers based in California due to the provisions of the AB5 bill, costing the performers a significant share of their income.
No date has yet been set for a full Senate floor vote on the AB5 amendments.
Photo by Steven Pavlov / Wikimedia Commons
