“They say I’m an independent contractor.”

The presumption runs your way

Labor Code § 3357: any person rendering service for another, other than as an independent contractor, is presumed to be an employee. You do not prove you were an employee. They prove you were not.

A 1099 does not decide it. A signed agreement calling you a contractor does not decide it. Courts have said for decades that the label the parties used is not controlling, because otherwise every employer would simply use the label.

The construction rule almost nobody knows

Labor Code § 2750.5. Anyone performing work for which a contractor’s license is required, who does not hold that license, is an employee as a matter of law. Not presumed — is.

Read that again if you work in construction. An unlicensed person doing licensed work cannot be an independent contractor in California. Roofing, framing, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, drywall, concrete, painting — if the job needed a license and you were doing it without one, you were an employee of whoever hired you. Two limits. No license is required for a small job — one where the whole project is under $1,000 in labor, materials and everything else, and needs no building permit — so § 2750.5 does not reach it. And if a homeowner hired you to work on their own home, you are outside the workers’ compensation definition of employee if the work was, or was contracted to be, for less than 52 hours or for wages of $100 or less in the 90 days before the injury.

This single statute resolves a large share of construction denials, and it is routinely not raised.

The ABC test

For most other work, the law codifies the Dynamex ABC test. You are an employee unless the hiring entity proves all three:

A — you are free from control and direction in performing the work, in fact and under the contract; B — the work is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business; and C — you are customarily engaged in an independently established trade of the same nature.

Prong B is where most of these fail. A restaurant’s cook, a cleaning company’s cleaner, a trucking company’s driver — the work is the business. Calling them contractors does not move it outside the usual course.

Where it genuinely is different

App-based drivers. Castellanos v. State of California (2024) 16 Cal.5th 588 upheld Proposition 22. Qualifying app-based rideshare and delivery drivers are independent contractors by statute and receive occupational accident insurance instead of workers’ compensation. That is not nothing, and it is not the same thing — the benefits are narrower and the process is different. If you were driving for an app, get the specifics of your situation looked at rather than assuming either answer.

Staffing and labor-contractor arrangements are a different question again — there, both companies can be liable. The law makes the client employer share civil liability for workers a labor contractor supplies to do the client’s regular, customary work at its premises or worksite. When there are two employers.

What to do now

File the claim anyway. Employment status is decided by a workers’ compensation judgeWCJ Workers’ Compensation Judge. Decides your case. There is no jury., not by the person who is denying it. The claim form does not require the employer to agree.

Collect what shows control: schedules you were given, instructions, uniforms, equipment they supplied, whether you could turn work down, whether you worked for anyone else, who set the price.

And note the date. The one-year statute of limitations runs whether or not anyone agrees you were an employee. Your deadlines.