Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill Friday that modifies California’s controversial gig-worker law, providing exemptions for freelance musicians, writers, photographers and other self-employed workers.
“These professions can continue to operate as freelancers, if they were qualified as freelancers under the previous standard,” said Carolyn Said, San Francisco Chronicle business reporter and an expert on Uber and Lyft.
Assembly Bill 5 was designed to support a California Supreme Court ruling known as Dynamex, which classified more workers as employees, providing them with perks and benefits not available to contractors.
However, the law caused a multitude of freelancers to lose employment after companies newly saddled with the financial burden of such perks slashed positions.
Effective immediately, Assembly Bill 2257 creates flexibility by significantly expanding the different types of business contracting relationships and allowing businesses to comply with the law through multiple pathways.
Said told KCBS Radio that in total, about 100 professions are now exempt, but Uber and Lyft drivers are not.
“This legislation was a product of robust dialogue over the last year with workers and businesses from every part of the state,” the author of the bill, State Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, said in a statement.
Gonzalez noted that AB 2257 continues to provide protections for workers against misclassification that had previously gone unchecked for decades under the old rules.