In a unanimous decision last month, California’s Supreme Court upheld Proposition 22, approved by 58 percent of voters in 2020, allowing workers for companies such as Uber and Lyft to work as independent contractors. This decision was fallout from Assembly Bill 5, a virtual declaration against the independence of workers, and not just rideshare drivers and truckers.

The original measure, by Democrat Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, limited freelance writers to 35 submissions per year, less than one a week. The measure also restricted editors, videographers, and photographers and forced musicians to become employees of whichever club would take them on. As trumpeter Joe Mazzaferro of the Jazz Cooperative told reporters, musicians should have the right to negotiate their compensation and “it’s our right to work as we choose.” California Democrats, including AB-5 supporter Kamala Harris, don’t think so.

By 2020, the bill had affected more than one million independent contractor and freelance workers in California. As they struggled to earn a living, AB-5 also harmed the effort to counter the Covid pandemic. That was particularly true in rural California, where hospitals and clinics lack the patient loads to support full-time staff in some nursing specialties. Independent contractors can provide those services, but AB-5 backers were unyielding.

“Furloughed Californians stand on the verge of being wiped out financially because the law prevents them from working part time in a variety of indispensable positions,” read a letter from more than 150 of California’s leading economists and political scientists. “Blocking work that is needed and impoverishing workers laid-off from other jobs are not the intentions of AB-5, but the law is having these unintended consequences and needs to be suspended. Gov. Gavin Newsom declined to suspend the measure, but went on to violate his own rules on masks and impose a rigid lockdown on the people.

AB 5 fundamentally transforms independent workers into employees, where they can be dragooned into unions that faithfully fund Democrats. Trouble is, contrary to establishment media claims, unions do not represent “labor” in any meaningful sense.

According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, a full 90 percent of American workers are not union members. Only 10 percent of workers nationwide are union members. In California, according to the BLS, 84.6 percent of workers are not union members, with only 15.4 percent taking union membership.

Those numbers reflect the freewill choices of workers, who know that master doesn’t know best and want to be their own boss. AB 5 forces workers to go against their own best interests, and if any worker thought it was a totalitarian-style measure it would be hard to blame them.

Rideshare companies are now being portrayed as “gig companies” but the people should not be fooled. This is all about the independence of workers, from drivers to handymen to writers and musicians. They are living the life of their own choosing, according to their own values and needs. The upholding of Proposition 22 provides some relief but the vile AB 5 needs to be completely dismantled. For all but the willfully blind, the reason should be clear.

Politicians rail against the “gig economy,” which is really the free market, the greatest generator of goods, services and wealth. The more politicians leave the market alone, the more the state will prosper.