* the person is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work
* the person performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business
* the person is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business
I wouldn't have been even close to meeting those. I had some freedom about how the work was performed, so number one is a maybe. I was doing software development for a software development company, so numbers two and three are hard "no"s. As a college student, I didn't care about insurance, or vacation time, or being a full employee. I came to a mutually-beneficial agreement with my employer, and this bill would have prevented that.
Also of note: California bans un-paid internships in the "free labor" sense. While this sounds good on the surface, it's not. I held internships in middle and high school that were awesome experience when I had time to burn, and those proved incredibly helpful in landing later paid internships, contract work, college acceptances, and salaried jobs. They were incredibly helpful, and I learned a ton, but I couldn't have done that were I a resident of California.
This bill is written to target the gig economy. Many college students I know pay make good money doing gig economy work. And many working-class teens I know who typically work fast food can now use gig economy shifts to fill in when they can't get shifts lined up working fast food or other typical jobs. This bill is awful for almost everyone, because it removes opportunities without providing alternative ones. The state does a great job of taking them away, and a comparatively-horrible job of creating them. Were I a teen-age Californian high-schooler, I'd now be looking at working fast food rather than software development.