California Freelancer Says She Questioned How She Would Survive Under This State Law
A freelance writer and editor is speaking out about the negative effects of a recent California law, saying she questioned how she was \u201cgoing to survive\u201d after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the legislation, known as AB 5.\xa0\n\u201cThe law ... was signed \u2026 on Sept. 18, 2019, and when I woke up that morning and I read about it, you know, the next day, I thought, \u2018This is going to be an existential threat to my career,'\u201d recalls Karen Anderson, founder of\xa0Freelancers Against AB5, a Facebook group with over 18,000 members.\n\u201cI\u2019m not going to\u2014how am I going to survive?\u201d Anderson adds of her thoughts at the time.\nThe\xa0website\xa0of the California Franchise Tax Board notes: \u201cAB 5 is a bill the governor signed into law in September 2019 addressing employment status when a hiring entity claims that the person it hired is an independent contractor.\u201d\nAnderson says she has worked for almost 25 years as a freelance writer, an editor or managing editor, and a photographer. She says she\xa0\u201cstarted investigating\u201d the state\u2019s new law \u201cand I realized that \u2026 it encompassed all professions.\u201d\n\u201cSo golf caddies, videographers, photographers, nurse practitioners, whatever. So I thought, well, I want to find out how it\u2019s affecting other people, not just me,\u201d Anderson says of the law, adding:\nAnd so I started this public Facebook group just to see if I could hear some people\u2019s stories and \u2026 sure enough, they started coming in in \u2026 November and December, people started losing their livelihoods overnight.\xa0Anderson, a participant in a recent\xa0Heritage Foundation panel discussion, is\xa0today\u2019s guest on \u201cThe Daily Signal Podcast.\u201d She shares the No. 1 takeaway of the California law with listeners and discusses what\u2019s being done to change it.\n Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.