The gig work law in California, which is scheduled to begin from January 2020, sought to push Lyft and Uber to convert their drivers into employees instead of being independent contractors. However, it could strike the state’s taxi industry instead.

The taxi drivers typically are contractors. Several say that they may have a financial benefit by earning minimum wage as well as overtime benefits. However, they still fear that the taxi industry can incur additional expenses as its very precarious financially, which may in turn lead it its collapse.

It is possible that the taxi drivers to be categorised under AB5, Lorena Gonzalez, Assembly woman said. Changes are required in terms of how the industry functions, she said, adding that we all aided the development of this issue as well as misclassification in taxi industry. But, we aggravated the issue by not regulating Lyft and Uber ever, continued Gonzalez.

According to Gonzalez, the decision for coming up with a solution should be left upon each city. This is one local issue and the local governments should be held responsible to fix it, Gonzalez added.

Notably, AB5 says that workers remain employees unless they’re controlling their working conditions on their own, do work which is not central to the mission of a business and hold independent enterprises while doing such kind of work.