Category Archives: Joint Employment

05.15.17
by

The Myth of “Temporary Employees”

IMG_1067What is a “temporary employee”? I have practiced employment law for 20 years (Note to self: Keep practicing; someday you’ll get good at it.) and I can’t tell you. It’s a state secret. All lawyers have been sworn to secrecy forever.

Either that or, if you really want to know and say “pretty please” (with or without sugar on top, but no artificial sweetener please), that term has no legal significance. Usually the term is used to mean one of two things:

  1. your employee, hired on a trial basis with some sort of probationary period; or
  2. a staffing agency worker, retained to augment staff levels on a temporary basis.

Under option 1, the “temp” is a regular W-2 employee of yours, probably employed at will like your other employees, but whether you call that person “temp” or “permanent” or “regular” or “irregular” (?), none of it matters. A temp worker who is your employee, paid subject to deductions, is your employee.  Temp time counts toward FMLA eligibility. Continue reading →

04.27.17
by

Avoid this ADA Trap When Using Staffing Agency Workers

ADA staffing agency reasonable accommodation ambulance-2166079_1280ADA Quick Quiz: Your company uses staffing agency workers. A staffing agency worker discloses a medical need and asks for a reasonable accommodation — maybe a computer screen reading program, or an ergonomic chair, or a modified work schedule.

1. Which company must have the interactive conversation to determine what reasonable accommodation is appropriate?

(A) Your company
(B) The staffing agency
(C) Both

2. Which company is obligated to provide the reasonable accommodation?

(A) Your company
(B) The staffing agency
(C) Both

3. Which company is obligated today for the reasonable accommodation?

(A) Your company
(B) The staffing agency
(C) Both

Answers: Continue reading →

04.03.17
by

What is an ABC Test? (and why these tests are a problem)

abc

As we know, there are a variety of tests used to determine Independent Contractor vs. Employee, and the proper test varies depending of the law being applied.

Most of these tests are balancing tests. A variety of factors are considered, and no single factor is determinative.

ABC tests, however, are different. ABC tests start with a presumption that a contractor is an employee, then requires a company to prove each of three factors to protect a contractor’s status as a contractor.

ABC tests tend to apply only to state unemployment coverage laws and, less commonly, to
state workers’ compensation laws. Continue reading →

03.27.17
by

Avoid this Common But Disastrous Mistake in Staffing Agency Agreements

staffing services mistake-1966448_1920

A client once asked me to review the Employment Agreement of a candidate they were considering hiring. The candidate had recently been terminated but his Employment Agreement contained a 12-month non-compete, and my client’s job offer seemed pretty clearly to be for a competing job.

But the terminating employer made once huge mistake. When it meant to terminate employment, instead it terminated the agreement … and with it, the non-compete.  Oops!

I see the same mistake in Staffing Agreements and Professional Services Agreements all the time.

These agreement are usually intended to serve as Master Service Agreements (MSA), with additional work orders to govern the actual services to be provided. These MSAs contain very important clauses that are intended to survive, even after the services have stopped. Examples of clauses intended to survive the termination of services include indemnification, insurance coverage, preservation of confidential information, and right to audit.

The mistake I see over and over, however, is the inclusion of a termination clause that allows for termination of the agreement, not merely termination of services.

Continue reading →

03.09.17
by

Joint Employment Tests Are All Wrong, Says Federal Appeals Court

Fourth Circuit Adopts More Liberal Joint Employment Test Than NLRB’s Browning-Ferris Decision

IMG_1045(This article originally appeared in Corporate Counsel on March 1, 2017. Click here to view the original.)

Are 59 years of joint employment rulings all wrong? Yes, says a federal appeals court in a landmark Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) decision issued in late January.

Relying on a 1958 Department of Labor (DOL) regulation, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has rewritten the test for joint employment, defining the concept so expansively that every outsourced and staffing agency relationship might be deemed joint employment under the FLSA. The decision in Salinas v. Commercial Interiors, issued unanimously by a three-judge panel (all Obama appointees), takes a more radical position on joint employment than even the NLRB took in its controversial 2015 Browning-Ferris decision.

The Court of Appeals concludes that everybody – including the DOL itself – has been misinterpreting the DOL’s joint employment regulation for 59 years.

Is that possible? Can the Court literally mean that? Or is this an example of the adage, “bad facts make bad law”? The facts in Salinas suggest there was probably a joint employment relationship under any test. It remains to be seen how this test will be applied and whether decades of court decisions and DOL guidance will truly be disregarded.

Meanwhile, employers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia are immediately and directly impacted, since these are the states that the Fourth Circuit covers.

What Happened?

Continue reading →

02.13.17
by

Why Your Standard Agreements with Staffing Agencies Are Risky Business (Starring Tom Cruise)

broken-glass-joint-employment-agreementIt’s Valentine’s Day. You and your sweetie want to get away for the weekend. Your high school offspring will stay home. They seem responsible, promise not to break the law, and promise if they break anything they will pay for it. So you’re good, right?

Come on, wake up. Have you seen Risky Business? American Pie? House Party (very underrated movie, by the way)? Continue reading →

01.30.17
by

Four FMLA Traps When Using Temp Workers — and How to Avoid Them

The FMLA is full of traps for companies who use staffing agency workers, both for staff augmentation and temp-to-hire. Here are a few of the most common mistakes and how to avoid them:

fmla-danger-cliff-caution-2

photo credit: ransomtech Chimney Bluffs State Park via photopin (license)

1. Mistake: Not counting staffing agency time as service time, when determining whether the worker has worked for 12 months.

Tip: Staffing agency time counts. Add staffing agency time plus regular employee time to determine whether the worker has 12 months of service time. Accumulate all time worked during the past seven years. Continue reading →

01.27.17
by

Joint Employment Update: What’s The Status of Browning-Ferris and the NLRB?

2017-browning-ferris-nlrb

In August 2015, the NLRB rewrote the book on joint employment, declaring in the Browning-Ferris case that the right to exercise minimal control, even if not actually exercised, was enough to create a joint employment relationship.  (Read more here.) Previously, joint employment under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) required the actual exercise of a meaningful level of control.

But what’s happened since then? What happens next? What should employers expect in 2017 regarding joint employment under the NLRA?

Continue reading →

12.23.16
by

Welcome

welcome-medium

Once upon a time, it was easy for companies to know who their employees were.  Not so much anymore.

With the rise of the gig economy and other creative workforce arrangements, the lines between employee and non-employee have blurred.

Companies often prefer the flexibility of retaining non-employee workers.  These relationships come in many varieties — independent contractors, consultants, staffing agency workers, outsourced vendors, etc.  Many workers prefer these flexible relationships too.  But a growing chorus of government agencies and class action plaintiffs have begun to cry foul. Continue reading →