SACRAMENTO — There were truck drivers demonstrating next to dancers, and singers standing in solidarity with court transcribers.
There were also massage therapists, sign language interpreters, choreographers, lots of freelance journalists and, of course, all manners of Democrats and Republicans, all united under the most unlikely of circumstances.
It took Assembly Bill 5 to bring such a diverse group to the west steps of the Capitol on Tuesday morning, where around 300 people listened to several speakers describe how the “gig economy” law had impacted — or, in many cases, eliminated — their livelihoods.
The “Rally To Repeal AB5” event, sponsored by Assemblyman Kevin Kiley (R-Sacramento) and Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez (R-Lake Elsinore), was aimed at rallying support for AB1928, which would overturn the “gig economy” law sponsored by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) and signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
“Organized labor has played a vital role in humanizing the American workplace — grounding our economic lives in the values of dignity, autonomy, and respect for our common good,” Kiley said at the beginning of the rally. “Assembly Bill 5 is an affront to those values.”
If there was one common theme in the speeches, it was this — none of the people impacted by AB5 wanted the government’s help in the first place.
“We are not stupid,” said Peter Kalivas, artistic director at the PKG Project, a San Diego-based, world-class dance theater group. “We do not need to be saved from ourselves. We can negotiate our own contracts. AB5 is insulting.”
AB5 changed labor law in California by setting more-restrictive guidelines on businesses that hire independent contractors. In many cases, it’s left businesses with the choice of making the contractors full-time employees, severely curtailing the number of times they use them, or not using them at all. Everyone in attendance seemed to fall into one of the two latter groups.
Author Walter Kirn said he grew up on a farm in Minnesota, with a dream of becoming a writer, and was mesmerized by the California lifestyle. He definitely achieved his golden dream in California — his novel “Up in the Air” became a film starring George Clooney — but, says AB5 has already rendered much of the landscape unrecognizable.
“Little did I ever think that California, a state that brought us great music from bands like the Jefferson Airplane, would become the first state that would make musicians stand outside and not be able to express themselves,” Kirn said.
The author also had harsh words on the impact of the law on the media, warning community journalism was being dealt a blow from which it might not be able to recover.
“This bill cuts them off at the knees,” he said.
While the speakers told stories of how the law has impacted their lives, everyone in the crowd had their own stories to tell. And in some cases, they’d been victimized twice by the same law.
Among those was Petaluma’s Jeff Sherman, who has worked for decades as both a musician and a scopist, which reviews, edits and proofreads transcripts produced by a court reporter. AB5, he said, effectively shut down not one, but both of his livelihoods.
“The lady I worked for (as a court transcriber) quit because she didn’t want to deal with it (AB5),” he said. “Work is leaving the state because of this law.”
His gigs as a musician have dried up as well. He said the 10-member band he was a member of had to increase their per-gig fee by $650 to cover the extra costs brought on by the law — and by doing so, they basically priced themselves out of business.
“It’s gutting the arts in California,” he said.
Sherman’s wife, Julie, said “We’re in our 60s and always did things the right way. But now, all we worked for all our life is threatened because the government came along,” she said. “It was two years until we were going to retire. Now we’re taking money out of our 401K to get by. We have no income.”
Another musician at the rally was Colleen Keane, who came up from Ventura with a sign that said “Democrat — repeal AB5.”
“I don’t have any place to sing (because of the law), so I came here,” she said.
Gary Smithhart, an independent trucker from Hayward, said his group of 400 truckers “has lost hundreds of thousands of dollars because of this. This isn’t the state of California any more — it’s the state of confusion.”
AB1928 is one of several bills that have been introduced with the aim of overturning all or part of AB5, which has officially been on the books less than a month. The authors of AB1928 have also written a Constitutional amendment that would overturn AB5.
Other bills include SB875, which would exempt interpreters and translators; AB1925, which would exempt small businesses (with fewer than 100 employees and an average of less than $15 million in gross receipts the past three years); and two separate bills that would exempt newspaper delivery drivers and freelance journalists.
AB5 currently limits freelancers to 35 assignments per year before that publication would be required to make them a part-time or full-time employee.