Open Letter to State Representatives

State Senators Bill Dodd, Mike McGuire, State Assemblymen Marc Levine, Jim Woods:

 

You recently voted “Yes” on AB5. You neither advocated for, nor supported a Republican effort to

exempt the trucking industry from AB5.

The Engineering Contractor industry has, in the past, supported you and endorsed you as you became

our State Legislators in Sacramento. We expected you to work hard, be fair, and vote without

predetermination on important issues. We would not have endorsed you had we known your future

voting would be guided by Special Interest groups that pushed for self serving legislation. Yet this is

exactly what you did in supporting and voting for AB5.

Now that AB5 has been signed into law by Governor Newsom, it is time for you to accept responsibility

for the constituents you turned your back on. These constituents, the truckers who work hard every

day in our industry, are being forced by you to give up their independent contractor status and be

legislated into becoming employees. They have always had that as a choice, yet they chose to buy their

own trucks, and control which jobs and which trucking brokers to work on and with. Many have said

they will relocate to another State. Some have said they will try to sell their trucks and look for another

career. I haven’t heard any of them who want to thank you for passing AB5. They are not thankful.

They don’t feel grateful for your actions. They feel betrayed by your vote and by your silence when

your fellow legislators asked for them to be exempted and you ignored their pleas because the majority

knew they had the power and you could hide behind that power.

There were lots of heroes that helped clean up after the fires of 2017 in Sonoma, Lake, and Mendocino

Counties. You know someone who lost their home to the fires and had their sites cleaned up and

hauled off by some of those truckers. Those truckers and the brokers who dispatch them, will now have

difficult times ahead of them. You have effectively turned heroes into victims by your passage of AB5.

What other results can we expect from your Yes vote on AB5? We can expect fewer trucks will be

available for delivery of rock and asphalt and concrete to our much needed infrastructure work. We

can expect highway construction projects to take longer to complete which will affect commuters and

taxpayers alike. We can expect the projects that need trucking to cost more so Cities and Counties will

get less miles of road repaired than before you cast your vote as a Yes on AB5.

 

The trucking brokers, who are so integral to our industry, will see their number of trucks dispatched be

reduced by 60 to 80%. Some will go out of business altogether. They will not thank you for your vote.

The labor groups who supported AB5 will thank you. But the people you legislated out of a job won’t

thank you for not standing up for them. Nope, they won’t thank you.

Signed With a Little Less Respect,

John Bly

That’s All Folks!

John Bly