Employees? Self-employed ? In the fall of 2019, California believed it had settled the debate on the "Gig economy", the on-demand economy, by adopting a law requiring companies to grant their contract workers advantages comparable to those of employees: sick leave, minimum wage, unemployment and disability insurance. It was the first attempt at the scale of a state of this importance to curb the "uberization" of work and the proliferation of precarious jobs.
For Californian elected officials, it was a question of fighting against the widening inequalities, in the shadow of what experts now call the "Two-jobs economy", the economy where it takes two jobs to get by. Lawmaker Lorena Gonzalez, a former San Diego unionist, daughter of a farm worker and Stanford graduate, accused technology platforms of practicing methods "Feudal" under cover 'Flexibility'.
The law, known as AB5, entered into force on 1st January. It requires companies operating in California to reclassify contract employees as employees who meet the conditions defined by the State Supreme Court in 2018. "The presumption is that you are an employee unless three criteria are simultaneously met", explains Ken Jacobs, director of the Berkeley University research center on work: being independent of company control, performing a task that is not included in "The main activity" and offer its services to other employers.
A definition that strikes at the heart of the gig economy, including the second criterion. Uber may proclaim to be a platform that connects customers and drivers and not a transport company, its defense does not convince the experts. "For a company that pays people to drive, it's hard to pretend that driving isn't at the heart of its business Notes Professor Jacobs.
Panic
The main aim of the law was to protect the convicts of the digital economy: the drivers of VTC companies like Uber and Lyft, the deliverers of Amazon Flex, DoorDash, Instacart, Postmates subject to pricing which only algorithms have the key to.
But tens of thousands of contract workers in more traditional trades have noticed that it also includes them: freelancers (if they write more than thirty-five annual articles for the same company), proofreaders, interpreters, truckers, photographers. The law has caused panic in hairdressing salons, accounting firms, yoga clubs, forced to use lawyers to find out whether their auxiliaries were contracted or not.
