Two recent court decisions are helping to quell the effects of the recently-passed Assembly Bill AB 5 (Gonzales, Chaptered September 18, 2019) in regard to California trucking companies, by determining that federal law preempts the most problematic part of both AB 5 and the 2018 California Supreme Court decision Dynamex West Operation v. California Superior Court. Both Dynamex and AB 5 worked to institute the new California worker classification test, the ABC Test, which provides for the following:
For purposes of the provisions of this code and the Unemployment Insurance Code, and for the wage orders of the Industrial Welfare Commission, a person providing labor or services for remuneration shall be considered an employee rather than an independent contractor unless the hiring entity demonstrates that all of the following conditions are satisfied:
(A) The person is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of the work and in fact.
(B) The person performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity's business.
(C) The person is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as that involved in the work performed.
