California may have just passed a death sentence on the gig economy.
Late Tuesday night, as many California residents slept in their beds, the state legislature passed a bill that is expected to impact hundreds of thousands of independent contractors across the state.
For months now, the state assembly has been debating controversial legislation seeking to redefine how companies classify independent contractors. Directed at the gig economy, which is comprised of mainly contractors, Assembly Bill 5 (AB5) proposed changing the status of workers within the state from freelancers to actual employees—completely changing the model of the burgeoning sector.