Making Sure OO Voices Are Heard Regarding AB5

The AB5 law in California isn’t exactly brand new, but it is still creating quite the buzz. Host Gabrielle Bejarano invited the Director of Legislative Affairs for OOIDA, Bryce Mongeon onto the show to discuss AB5 and how it’s playing out for the trucker community.  

AB5, under California law, helps to describe and detail who is classed as an employee and who is classed as a contractor. There are direct changes to previous legislation which directly effect the trucker community. Mongeon explained, “So the big problem with AB5 for the trucking community is the ABC test and that’s the new classification test that was codified in the law.”  

The law of the tests states that a person is an employee unless that person can satisfy all three ABC prongs. The problem for the trucking community is the B prong, which states that the person can not be performing work that is in the same course of business as the entity they are working for. If, for example, you are providing trucking and transportation services for a trucking and transportation company, you can’t satisfy the B prong “and so therefore, you’re automatically an employee,” said Mongeon.  

The concern for this legislature is that the law would force owner and operator truckers out of the independent contractor business model and would “require that carrier to reclassify them as employees,” stated Mongeon. It is, however, currently unclear how California is going to enforce the law while many legal challenges are ongoing. “It may up-end our members business model and then we really don’t know how it’s going to work just yet,” Mongeon said with their involvement in the case, “We can make sure that owner/operators and small business truckers voices are heard as part of this case.” 

While a lot of the legal proceedings may appear quietly ongoing, Mongeon remarked on the importance of making your voice heard to lawmakers, “Be involved,” he said. If lawmakers hear how a certain community is effected, they might just adjust how it plays out.