Revised Referral Agency Exception Effective September 4, 2020, Assembly Bill (AB) 2257 and Labor Code section 2777 broaden the “referral agency” exception to the state’s strict “ABC” definition of independent contractors. A referral agency is a “business that provides clients with referrals for service providers to provide services under a contract,” other than the specific […]
California Remodels Exceptions to Its Strict Independent Contractor Test Beginning with the California Supreme Court’s Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court decision (April, 2018) and continuing with the passage of AB 5, effective January 1, 2020, state policymakers have sought to limit the definition of “independent contractors” under a severe ABC test. The trend […]
California Wants Uber and Lyft Drivers as Employees It seemed like a good idea at the time: the rapid growth of Uber-style “gig economy” business models ostensibly offering a win-win of worker freedom and consumer convenience. Yet, California government came to another conception of such arrangements: presumed exploitation. Hence enter AB 5 and its hardball […]
Federal Court Denies Uber Request to Stop AB5 In a blow to the gig economy, a Los Angeles federal court has ruled that Uber, Postmates and two individual plaintiffs are unlikely to succeed on their constitutional challenges to AB5. Olson v. State of California (Olson). While noting the potential harm Uber and the other plaintiffs […]
Effective January 1, 2020, a portion of Assembly Bill (AB) 5 — new Labor Code section 2750.3(e) — exempts bona fide business-to-business contracting relationships from the ultra-strict Dynamex “ABC” test for independent contractor classification.