You’re a savvy business owner. You make good investment decisions, hire good people to work for you and you watch your costs. You are a fair person. You’re not racist or sexist. You try to keep things simple. Then you have a difference of opinion with someone who works for you. S/he sues, alleging discrimination […]
Your “Independent Contractors” Are Probably Employees — and That’s a BIG Problem…
I know, I’ve written before about mis-classifiying workers as independent contractors, when legally they are really employees. I wrote in more detail about that here. So why am I back on that topic? For one thing, it’s not going away, and it’s not likely to any time soon. The IRS, the USDOL and their State […]
The DOL on Joint Employment and the FLSA
Employment relationships are changing. Those changes have turned traditional assumptions about employment relationships upside down. I have written before about the phenomenon of some employers having more than one person or entity employing them at the same time, often for the same job. That is known as joint employment or co-employment. (Click here and here for a bit […]
Sleepy’s and Uber: Driving the Worker Classification Debate?
You may not need me to tell you that 2015 has been an extraordinary year for changes in employment law. While many of the issues in and of themselves are not new, we have seen some cases that provide a new twist. This week’s hot-but-maybe-not-so-new issue is worker classification, i.e. employee v. independent contractor. Yes, […]
Employee or Independent Contractor? How to Tell if Your Workers Are Misclassified
Last week, we ventured into the scary territory of worker (mis)classification. (Click here to review). We now know that classifying someone as an independent contractor just so we can avoid paying minimum wage, offering benefits, absorbing administrative costs and complying with laws that often feel onerous may be illegal and may land an employer in more […]