@LorenaSGonzalez Oh No NOT LABOR BROKERS! Either you’re more ignorant and naive than you think we independent contractors and subcontractors are, or you’re willingly forcing consenting taxpaying freelancers into your vision of employment; either way, you need to lie and/or ignore reality 1/
@LorenaSGonzalez to make your scenario true, and the result is people are out of work and desperate due to losing their careers thanks to AB5, while you’re trying to blame the “labor brokers.” Sickening. 2/
@LorenaSGonzalez I’ll cut through the philosophy of allowing consenting taxpaying adults to conduct business at they wish, I know you think we’re too stupid to figure that out for ourselves, I’ll just lay out why the concept of “labor broker,” isn’t always the horror you’re describing it as. 3/
@LorenaSGonzalez First, the easiest lie to pick apart: labor brokers take no risk? You ever run a business? Paid for your own advertising or insurance? Obv no. We risk our advertising dollars, insurance premiums, and our reputations, when we broker other consenting adults to partner with us. 4/
@LorenaSGonzalez On the other hand, there’s you. You get to write laws and blame your failures on “labor brokers” and court decisions unrelated to industries you’re destroying. All you need to do is lead people in a chant of “Fuck Trump” to win a popularity contest for your job, 5/
@LorenaSGonzalez in a district you commute to via limousine, where you essentially run unopposed. (For those unaware, that is actually what Lorena does at her rallies, I’m no fan of Trump myself but her tactics are no different than his). 6/
@LorenaSGonzalez You couldn’t do what I do if your life depended on it, but if I had no shame and sought power, I could easily do what you do. I couldn’t possibly sleep at night if I took away someone’s livelihood with the stroke of a pen, let alone thousands, possibly millions eventually. 7/
@LorenaSGonzalez I prefer to give people work so that we might both feed our families; you see, I’m a musician, and by the nature of my business, one of those dreaded “labor brokers.” 8/
@LorenaSGonzalez Not exactly a lie, but more of an ignorant assumption, is that W-2 employment could or should apply to us. I’m a small time musician, who hires other professionals at a rate negotiated per job, a few times a year, send out maybe 10 1099’s per year. 9/
@LorenaSGonzalez I don’t even consider jobs where myself or partners would make less than $50/hr on average onsite, thus we are reasonably well paid for the few hours we perform per week. And if we don’t like the pay, we can refuse the job and partner with others. 10/
@LorenaSGonzalez Some of those people hire and 1099 me too! Some are only IC’s, some are part timers with W-2 jobs as well. WE ALL RECEIVE 1099s for our contract work, WE ALL PAY TAXES ON OUR CONTRACT WORK. 11/
@LorenaSGonzalez However, the wording of AB5 makes it very difficult to partner with other professionals, even business to business, contributing to the same work goal- *Which is why you explicitly exempted your own profession of attorney from your own fantastic law!* 12/
@LorenaSGonzalez AB5 is difficult, impractical, and too expensive to comply with for some professions, just ask the lawyers you exempted because of that! 13/
@LorenaSGonzalez In your example you talk about contractors using hundreds of subcontractors. That’s truly insane, and a lie, to think that’s anywhere near the reality for the VAST MAJORITY of companies and IC’s devastated by AB5. 14/
@LorenaSGonzalez Most music jobs are small gigs (scary word, I know) and 1 night shows, even most residencies are 1-3 shows a week. Yes there are commercial music houses, publicly funded muni orchestras, etc, with set schedules, set types of jobs, where an hourly pay situation makes sense. 15/
@LorenaSGonzalez They can unionize and realize the complete vision of your employer/employee serfdom fantasy, but that’s a VAST MINORITY of music work. 16/
@LorenaSGonzalez Most of us work gig to gig, pay our own health insurance, business insurance, and pay our own self employment taxes which DO contribute to SS, Medicare, and state agencies. 17/
@LorenaSGonzalez Rather than lying about what we do, and pathetically playing a victim card by shaming “labor brokering,” you could be offering hope or relief to the many other IC’s who also work in situations in which w-2 employment makes no sense. 18/
@LorenaSGonzalez Your one time tax break offer, to help ease the burden of forcing us into an asinine business model, is laughably insulting. You might as well tell us to eat cake. 19/
@LorenaSGonzalez Yes I’m a labor broker, and a brokered laborer, most musicians are, it’s the nature of the business, which existed long before governments could regulate us. And we’re happy to do it! 20/
@LorenaSGonzalez As foolish as we peasants are, we have actually heard of jobs where you can go to 40 hours a week and get health insurance. SOME OF US DON’T WANT OR NEED THEM! 21/
@LorenaSGonzalez Imagine that, not needing to rely on an employer, paying your own way through life, saving for your own retirement- sounds like an American ideal, but I know that’s anathema to you. 22/
@LorenaSGonzalez Oh, AND SORRY FOR BROKERING ALL THAT LABOR. #lorenalies 23/23
