When Exploiting Companies Blame the Law

When AB-5 passed the California legislature and was signed into law in September, it was heralded as landmark legislation. And when it goes into effect on New Year's Day, it will extend basic worker protections to at least one million workers, many of whom worked as independent contractors—for low pay and no benefits—even though they've worked for just one company. The bill confers minimum wage, overtime eligibility, and sick leave, among other protections, to gig economy freelancers, and forces employers to pay taxes for unemployment and disability. The highest-profile companies affected by those changes are Silicon Valley behemoths like Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, and Postmates, which have, according to the new law's champions, been misclassifying their workforce for the purpose of suppressing wages. “It will have major reverberations around the country,” David Weil, a top Labor Department official during the Obama administration, told The New York Times after it passed.