I saw this truck while driving home last week from my daughter’s college graduation. Now I’m no livestock dietician (I failed that course in law school), but this seems like the worst possible thing to feed your animals.

Whoever’s behind the labeling also needs some help with marketing. I know I wouldn’t buy that.

I’m also not buying the DOL’s recent announcement that it’s holding two public forums to help it decide what to do about a new independent contractor misclassification test. I think we all know what the DOL is going to do already.

The DOL will hold an Employer Forum on June 24, then a Worker Forum on June 29. Anyone can attend. RSVP links are here (6/24) and here (6/29).

After this charade open-minded exchange of viewpoints, the DOL will get to work preparing a new rule for determining who is an employee under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The current regulation, issued by the Trump DOL, refocuses the traditional Economic Realities Test inquiry on two core factors: (1) the nature and degree of the individual’s control over the work, and (2) the individual’s opportunity for profit or loss. The Biden DOL tried (unsuccessfully) to prevent the Trump rule from going into effect, but a federal court ruled that the Biden DOL’s attempt to dismantle the rule was flawed, and the Trump rule therefore went into effect.

Now, let’s not kid ourselves. Just because a court told the Biden DOL that it’s stuck with this Trump-made rule doesn’t mean anyone at the DOL is actually applying it. The Biden DOL has said it plans to rewrite the rule, pronto. The new rule will make it harder to classify workers as independent contractors under the FLSA. We already know that’s going to happen, even if we don’t know the precise language to be used.

In late 2022, the DOL will issue its new rule, which will be like the old rule that we had before the Trump DOL’s new rule. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. And with each new administration, it will become harder then easier then harder to be classified as a contractor under the FLSA.

So I will not be wasting my time listening in on these forums. I expect they’ll be as useful as inedible food. Which cannot be good for the GI tract.

© 2022 Todd Lebowitz, posted on WhoIsMyEmployee.com, Exploring Issues of Independent Contractor Misclassification and Joint Employment. All rights reserved.