AB5 Repeal Vote Fails, But Law’s Support in Assembly Has Dipped

SACRAMENTO, Calif.—A proposal in the California State Assembly to repeal the controversial AB5 “gig worker” law failed in a state house vote on Monday. But the votes to keep the law in place numbered only 53, down from the 61 who voted in favor of AB5 in September of last year when the bill passed the assembly.  In last year’s vote, AB5 received 16 “no” votes. On Monday, 17 members voted in favor of repealing the bill. But nine assembly members did not vote at all on the repeal, compared to only two who sat out last September’s vote. “We’ve done better with each vote, but that’s no comfort to those whose lives remain shattered,” Republican Assembly Member Kevin Kiley wrote on his Twitter account. “Thank you to all who have joined this fight to restore a politics of decency in California.” Kiley represents California’s assembly District 6, a mostly suburban district northeast of Sacramento. The original AB5 was sponsored by Democrat Lorena Gonzalez, from the 80th district, covering southern portions of San Diego. The law would require numerous categories of freelance workers in the state who currently work on an “independent contractor” basis to be reclassified as “employees,” which would require companies to provide benefits and other protections offered to employees—but also would subject previously independent workers to the rules and restrictions now levied by companies against their workers. For workers in the adult industry, the bill could have a direct impact in several potentially harmful ways—including in some cases a requirement that they reveal their true names. The law would also end the freewheeling system under which strip club dancers could leave work each night with cash in hand, while protecting their identities. Gonzalez this year has introduced a bill, AB2257, that would exempt many categories of workers from the AB5 requirements, including any “individual performance artist presenting material that is their original work and creative in character and the result of which depends primarily on the individual’s invention, imagination, or talent,” a description that may, in theory, apply to adult industry performers. Gonzalez’s new bill passed through the state Senate Appropriations Committee on a unanimous vote last Thursday. The Assembly vote Monday was actually a vote to “lay on the table,” which is legislative language for killing a piece of legislation. The repeal proposal was offered by Kiley as an amendment to SB915—a COVID-19 economic relief bill aimed at mobile home dwellers—but Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon made the motion to lay the amendment on the table. It was Calderon’s motion that received 53 votes in favor, 17 against. When AB5 passed in September of last year, it received only one vote from a Republican, Orange County Assembly Member Tyler Diep. But this time Diep appeared to change his position, voting against “tabling” Kiley’s repeal amendment—in other words, a vote in favor of repeal. Photo By David Monniaux / Wikimedia Commons