Shawn Yadon, CEO of the California Trucking Association (CTA), issued the following statement in response to the decision by The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel to reverse the preliminary injunction granted in January 2020 from the U.S. District Court. That preliminary injunction had blocked the State of California from enforcing Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5) upon motor carriers and independent owner-operators conducting business in the state. The new test was set forth in the Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court (Dynamex) ruling, which was subsequently codified by the California Legislature in the form of AB 5 in 2020:
“We continue to stand by our initial claim that the implementation of AB 5’s classification test is preempted by federal law and is clearly detrimental to the long-standing and historical place California’s 70,000 owner-operators have had in the transportation industry.
A small San Francisco circus tried to do right by its workers. Now it may be going out of business
Ironically, if Circus Bella had just waited to reclassify its workers, it might not be in this mess.
Lily Janiak April 26, 2021Updated: April 26, 2021, 7:02 pm
Circus Bella Executive Director Abigail Munn does plank exercises at her home in San Francisco. Munn says her 13-year-old circus company is on the verge of going out of business because of a combination of threats: the pandemic, AB5 and high workers’ comp payments that because of bureaucratic rules can’t be reduced, even though the company isn’t performing. Photo: Marlena Sloss, Special to The Chronicle
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Employers grappling with independent-contractor classification had a busy 2020 and should expect a flurry of additional activity this year. Few areas in employment law are changing as rapidly. Last year, many concerned about the future of contractor-classification laws paid careful attention to California and AB 5, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 2020, and codified the California Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Dynamex Operations West Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles.
In a recent article for Law360, McDermott partners Ellen Bronchetti and Ron Holland consider the impacts of the California law on the gig economy, employer classification tests and organized labor in the United States.
Tuesday, March 2, 2021
On Wednesday, February 10, California 7-Eleven franchise owners asked U.S. District Court Judge Dale Fischer to allow the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on the district court’s previous denial of the franchisees’ application for class certification. The franchise owners filed a class action against 7-Eleven, claiming they are actually employees of the franchisor and not independent contractors. The impetus for the franchisees’ motion is a previous ruling from Judge Fischer, that the court should evaluate the franchisees’ claims of California labor code violations under the eleven-factor test set forth in the 1989 holding in
S.G. Borello & Sons Inc. v. Department of Industrial Relations, while claims for violation of California’s wage orders would be subject to decision under the so-called “ABC test.” The California Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in