#ncga: A payday for drive-by reporters?
It appears that twin brothers Bob Rucho and Tom Apodaca are taking pity on the drive-bys who spend so much time peppering them with stupid questions and making them miserable. The GOP senators introduced a bill allowing for unemployment insurance and workman’s compensation payments for people employed by newspapers. Perhaps these two wise men were foreseeing a dire future for the drive-bys.
We’ve been hearing about McClatchy’s troubles for years. Recently, we’ve heard about layoffs at The Fayetteville Observer. (Perhaps these two weepy, kind-hearted guys were feeling extra generous with our money when they introduced this.) Their bill, introduced on March 30, struck the following language from the law:
[…] It shall be a rebuttable presumption that the term “employee” shall not include any person performing services in the sale of newspapers or magazines to ultimate consumers under an arrangement whereby the newspapers or magazines are to be sold by that person at a fixed price and the person’s compensation is based on the retention of the excess of the fixed price over the amount at which the newspapers or magazines are charged to the person. […]
Alas, these two merry-makers withdrew this bill from consideration today.
The language contained in Sens Apodaca and Rucho’s SB 693 will survive crossover. The independent contractor-newspaper carrier repeal is contained in a section near the end of SB 694, the omnibus worker’s/unemployment bill that sets up a new state agency to reclassify workers. That bill received a favorable report from the Senate Commerce Comm on Tuesday, sending the bill to the Senate floor.