AB5 wasn't perfect - it swept up all kinds of genuine freelancers, like writers who contributed articles to many publications - but the response wasn't aimed at fixing the bad parts. It was designed to destroy the good parts.

After #AB5, #Uber and #Lyft poured more than $200m into #Prop22, a ballot initiative designed to permanently bar the California legislature from passing any law to protect "gig workers."

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The passage of this law triggered howls of outrage from the state's fast-food industry, who pledged to spend $200m to put forward a ballot initiative to permanently kill the labor-business board.

This is a familiar story. In 2019, California's state legislature passed #AB5, a bill designed to end the gig-work fiction that people whose boss is an algorithm are actually "independent businesses," rather than employees.

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Prop 22 has gotten a tailwind thanks to defects in #AB5, a California law that tried to address the exploitation of gig workers but managed to capture large numbers of bona-fide freelancers, including writers like me. AB5 is imperfect and needs fixing.

Prop 22 is not that fix. Prop 22 is a license to indenture the most precarious and vulnerable Californians to a Ponzi scheme rigged by oil tyrants half a world away. Vote no on Prop 22.

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