by Carolyn Said, SF Chronicle
Published Feb. 6, 2020
The author of AB5, California’s new gig-work law, said Thursday that she’ll seek amendments that remove some restrictions on freelance journalists and photographers, and is eyeing further changes for musicians, small businesses and others, as well as an assistance fund to help small nonprofit arts groups comply.
“Based on dozens of meetings with freelance journalists & photographers, we have submitted language to legislative counsel that we hope to have available next week to put into AB1850 which will cut out the 35 submission cap & instead more clearly define freelancer journalism,” tweeted Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego. She also said she will make more prominent the bill’s exemptions for businesses serving other businesses and specify that freelance writers can take advantage of them.
Writers and photographers filed suit over the bill in December, saying AB5 was an unconstitutional restraint of free speech and the media. They particularly objected to its “irrational and arbitrary” limit of 35 submissions per year, per client.
The suit was filed by the libertarian Pacific Legal Foundation on behalf of the American Society of Journalists and Authors and the National Press Photographers Association.
“We’re glad to hear that Gonzalez is willing to revise the bill to protect freelance journalists from the devastation we’ve suffered this year,” San Diego freelance writer Randy Dotinga, board member and former president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, who spearheaded the lawsuit, said in an email. “We look forward to seeing the exact bill language. We also look forward to our hearing in federal court on March 9.”
“We have not seen the bill language, but I hope that the revised law will no longer treat journalists as second-class freelancers,” Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Jim Manley said in a statement. “Removing any submission caps and limits on video recording would be a step in the right direction. We look forward to reviewing the bill.”
Gonzalez said she’s calling for $20 million in the state budget to supply grants to small community nonprofit arts organizations “that make a good-faith effort to comply” with the new law. Many small theater, dance and music companies have said they operate on shoestring budgets and simply could not afford to hire all their performers and backstage crews as employees.
For instance, Solo Opera in Concord and Walnut Creek said it would cost $10,000 to comply with AB5 for its upcoming summer production of “Scalia/Ginsburg,” previously budgeted at $60,000. The money is for attorney fees for new contracts, payroll costs, workers compensation, insurance and more
“Being a small nonprofit, this is a huge hardship on us,” said founder and artistic director Sylvia Amorino, who volunteers full time to run the company. The five-member board decided to come up with the money out of their own pockets. Amorino raised $1,000 via a birthday fundraiser on Facebook.
However, she said, “if the law doesn’t change, we will have to go dark or take a hiatus. The costs would be unsustainable for us.”
She said she’s cautiously optimistic about the proposed grants but concerned that it might be “money we have to fight for (with) thousands of small companies competing.”
Gonzalez filed placeholder legislation, AB1850, early this year, saying she would use it to clarify AB5.
“We plan to address the unique situation regarding musicians in the next round of amendments by March,” she tweeted Thursday. Musicians — the profession most associated with the word gig — had protested that under AB5 even garage bands would have to form employment structures, and that being hired as employees for one-night-stand engagements would be prohibitive.
The bill currently exempts fine artists, a term that Gonzalez tweeted would be better defined after input from the state Employment Development Department.
“This is just a piece of the clarifications you will see in AB1850 & additional resources and relief for small businesses that are complying with this new law,” she wrote on Twitter. “We plan to have a few more formal announcements next week.”
However, she tweeted, the amendments do not signal an end to the bill — and do not mean capitulation to the $110 million ballot initiative being pushed by Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and other companies to keep their drivers and couriers as independent contractors.
“I do believe in AB5 and will fight any attempts to repeal it,” Gonzalez tweeted. “I will fight Uber’s attempt to exempt themselves through the initiative.”
Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid