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39 minutes ago, MikeN said:

I guess this is a good time to ask.  With the recent bill going through the California legislature aimed at the gig economy, it feels very much like the attached A/B/C test ( is going to classify a lot of drum corps staff as employees?  

https://www.vox.com/2019/8/27/20833233/ab-5-california-bill-candidates-vote

Mike

Wow. Have not yet seen this. Interesting.

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49 minutes ago, MikeN said:

I guess this is a good time to ask.  With the recent bill going through the California legislature aimed at the gig economy, it feels very much like the attached A/B/C test ( is going to classify a lot of drum corps staff as employees?  

https://www.vox.com/2019/8/27/20833233/ab-5-california-bill-candidates-vote

Mike

More from your article:

"The sweeping bill, backed by labor unions, would make it much harder for companies to classify employees as independent contractors ... The law would essentially rewrite the rules of the gig economy, and businesses of all kinds are panicking ... [and] have launched aggressive lobbying and public relations campaigns to defeat the bill.

...

AB 5, which passed the state Assembly in May, presents the biggest challenge yet to the ride-hailing companies’ business models and would rewrite the rules of the entire gig economy. Hundreds of thousands of independent contractors in California, ranging from Uber and Amazon drivers to manicurists and exotic dancers, would likely become employees under the bill.

That small status change is huge. These workers would suddenly get labor protections and benefits that all employees get, such as unemployment insurance, health care subsidies, paid parental leave, overtime pay, workers’ compensation, and a guaranteed $12 minimum hourly wage. It also means companies that hire small armies of independent contractors are fuming about the added cost ...."

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What would happen if drum corps were required to provide these benefits for the people they've heretofore been classifying as independent contractors?

What's the financial hit, and could corps cut other expenses (props? electronics? what?) to offset it?

Also, this is a proposed California law. Would corps from other states be required to abide by it when touring through California?

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44 minutes ago, N.E. Brigand said:

More from your article:

"The sweeping bill, backed by labor unions, would make it much harder for companies to classify employees as independent contractors ... The law would essentially rewrite the rules of the gig economy, and businesses of all kinds are panicking ... [and] have launched aggressive lobbying and public relations campaigns to defeat the bill.

...

AB 5, which passed the state Assembly in May, presents the biggest challenge yet to the ride-hailing companies’ business models and would rewrite the rules of the entire gig economy. Hundreds of thousands of independent contractors in California, ranging from Uber and Amazon drivers to manicurists and exotic dancers, would likely become employees under the bill.

That small status change is huge. These workers would suddenly get labor protections and benefits that all employees get, such as unemployment insurance, health care subsidies, paid parental leave, overtime pay, workers’ compensation, and a guaranteed $12 minimum hourly wage. It also means companies that hire small armies of independent contractors are fuming about the added cost ...."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

What would happen if drum corps were required to provide these benefits for the people they've heretofore been classifying as independent contractors?

What's the financial hit, and could corps cut other expenses (props? electronics? what?) to offset it?

Also, this is a proposed California law. Would corps from other states be required to abide by it when touring through California?

Whooshhhh!

(The sound of me waving my hand over my head.  Clueless...)

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1 hour ago, N.E. Brigand said:

What would happen if drum corps were required to provide these benefits for the people they've heretofore been classifying as independent contractors?

It sounds like this bill is targeting for-profit "businesses", so I doubt it will apply to drum corps.

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1 hour ago, cixelsyd said:

It sounds like this bill is targeting for-profit "businesses", so I doubt it will apply to drum corps.

That would be nice for drum corps* but without having read the bill, I think that's unlikely. All the law does is tighten up the definition of "independent contractor", and in my experience, many labor laws apply pretty much the same for non-profits as they do for for-profits. (And I just skimmed one article that appears to saw the new bill would affect non-profits.) For instance, compare to the federal level, where in 2016, I know that non-profits were scrambling to make sure they were going to be compliant with the new determinations as to which employees were exempt from overtime and which were not -- a determination which was blocked by a court at the last minute (and then dropped, for a time, by the new administration). Had it gone into effect, the minimum salary for an employee to be exempt from overtime would have more than doubled, from $23,600 to $47,476 per year. Which meant non-profits were weighing who was going to get a big raise and who was going to be told they needed to keep under 40 hours.

Also, sometimes laws have unexpected consequences. In the last days of 2017, Congress passed a sweeping and huge (4,000 pages) new tax bill without any time for debate on its merits or even for legislators to read it (apart from the handful who wrote it). One thing the bill did was to remove a previous tax break that for-profit corporations got for providing free parking to their employees. I work for a non-profit. We had long provided free parking to our employees, the cost of which was (I'm making up some numbers here so as not to disclose confidential information) more than $50,000 per year. But as a non-profit, we don't pay taxes in the first place, so this law shouldn't have affected us, right?

Wrong. Upon examining the language of the law carefully, the IRS determined that there was no exception for non-profits, and since non-profits don't normally pay taxes, and thus couldn't have any tax break taken away, the IRS determined that as a consequence of the new law, non-profits had to pay taxes on the money they were spending for parking. And the rate was 21%. In our case, that would mean paying more than $10,000 per year in taxes. So what we did is to give all of our staff a raise and tell them that they were responsible for paying for parking from now on. But it was several months into 2018 before most accountants understood what was going on, so we didn't get to make this change until July 2018, meaning we ended up having to pay $5,000+ in taxes for those six months.

 

*Or would it? Would drum corps be better off in the long term if staffers knew they would get health insurance and so forth?

Edited by N.E. Brigand
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14 hours ago, garfield said:

There are dollars exchanged between MMs and the org that can be negotiated.  True, there is no cap on sports teams' non-player expenses but that doesn't mean there can't be in drum corps.

 

why would we want one? if a corps can do it and be fiscally responsible doing it, so be it. 

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13 hours ago, MikeN said:

I guess this is a good time to ask.  With the recent bill going through the California legislature aimed at the gig economy, it feels very much like the attached A/B/C test ( is going to classify a lot of drum corps staff as employees?  

https://www.vox.com/2019/8/27/20833233/ab-5-california-bill-candidates-vote

Mike

Didn't the issue of trying to consider staff "independent contractors" come up before.

If I recall correctly,at least one corps had a problem because of this.

 

Edited by rpbobcat
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7 hours ago, N.E. Brigand said:

That would be nice for drum corps* but without having read the bill, I think that's unlikely.

Okay, next issue is that hardly anyone in drum corps is a full-time employee.  Instructional staff are seasonal, temporary workers.  So are drivers, and even the tour manager.  Design staff are part-time.  Some administration are part-time or seasonal.  Only full-time employees (often, just the corps director) would definitely be subject to a law like what is being proposed here.

That said...

  • Design staff would have a tough time disavowing that their work is central to the business.
  • Instructional staff might get tripped up there too, especially for a multi-program youth arts organization.  Their missions usually center on "education", so the "faculty" are central to their business.

With these part-time or seasonal personnel, a full benefit package should not be required.  But minimum wage, overtime pay, and other assorted employer requirements would suddenly apply.

What would happen?  Like any other "employer", drum corps would look for ways around the new legal obstacles.  For instance:

  • Change full-time positions to part-time, seasonal, temporary, or whatever practical/necessary to evade requirements.
  • Some lightly-paid instructional staff spots would revert to volunteer status.
  • Corps based in California would consider the pros and cons of re-establishing home base in another state.
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