California’s contagious freelancers law spreading to New York

New California legislation designed to protect gig-economy workers at tech startups like Uber and Lyft has begun to slam freelancers across the state’s media industry — and the contagion is threatening New York, too.

Freelance writers and photographers from Los Angeles to San Francisco are scrambling to obtain an injunction to block the state’s independent contractors legislation, known as AB-5, from taking effect on Jan. 1, claiming it hurts their ability to find work and violates free-speech rights under a federal civil rights act.

The law was originally written to guarantee rights to workers by forcing tech giants like Uber and DoorDash to make many of them employees instead of independent contractors, guaranteeing better pay and benefits.

But the California News Publishers Association, which opposed the bill, said that far from protecting freelance writers and photographers and videographers, it actually penalizes them. Cash-strapped publishers who use freelancers are likely to jettison them rather than hire them as full-timers.

That came in to painful focus this week, with Vox Media’s decision to fire 200 California-based bloggers at SB Nation — despite the fact that the company’s left-leaning, namesake news site had praised the legislation in October.

“Longstanding relationships are being threatened,” said Tom Newton, executive director of the California News Publishers Association. “I suspect that there are thousands of freelance jobs in California that will be negatively affected by this law.”

With a 35-article cap per year for freelancers under AB5, Newton points out, a writer doing a regular column for a weekly publication would have to be put on staff. “That’s just not going to happen,” he said.

Industry watchdogs say the bill in California, which could end up wiping out thousands of freelance jobs, could also be copied in New York, potentially threatening the livelihood of thousands more writers and photographers.

A bill very similar to the California law was introduced last week by New York State Sen. Robert Jackson and New York Assemblywoman Deborah Glick.

Its backers say it is intended “to give rights to workers who are currently misclassified as independent contractors.”

The proposed legislation covers New York workers in several sections of labor law including unemployment, minimum wage and hours, and workers’ compensation. It will also extend them collective bargaining rights, which its sponsors say “would be a game changer for many working families.”

But there is a chance freelance writers and photographers could avoid getting ensnared as collateral damage.

“Senator Jackson and Assembly member Glick’s bill will include special consideration for professions where workers would be negatively impacted by reclassification,” said a spokesman for Jackson.

So far, the spokesman said that Jackson has met with the National Writers Union. But he has not yet heard from the American Society of Journalists and Authors and the National Press Photographers Association, which on Tuesday filed a suit in California seeking a last-minute injunction to block AB5.

“The law says it wants to protect these people, but many of our clients are freelance by choice,” noted Caleb Trotter, an attorney with the Pacific League Foundation which is representing the ASJA and the NPPA pro bono in the suit filed in Los Angeles.

“The government faces a heavy burden of justification when its regulations single out the press,” according to the suit, which says that the California law violates provisions of the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution.

The current law “singles out ASJA’s and NPPA’s members who are writers, editors, still photographers, and visual journalists by drawing unconstitutional content-based distinctions between who can freelance — limiting certain speakers to 35 submissions per client, per year and precluding some freelancers from making video recordings,” according to the suit.

As upsetting as the California law is to freelancers, Newton at the California News Publishers Association said it could have been worse.

Originally, the law was intended to cover thousands of independent contractors who deliver newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal and other papers to homes and offices.

But that subgroup was given a one-year reprieve before the law will apply to them.

Said Trotter, “Some California freelancers are just getting blacklisted since publishers don’t want the hassle and they’re using out-of-state freelancers.

“Our case seeks an injunction while the courts decide,” said Trotter.