Category Archives: Staffing Agency

12.18.23
by

How to Handle Background Checks for Staffing Agency Workers (and Avoid a Stinky Mess)

After a stolen SUV crashed in Wisconsin and its four occupants fled, one made the unfortunate decision to hide in a golf course port-a-potty. A golfer watched the events unfold and decided to take action, flipping the port-a-potty on its side, door facing down, to trap the car thief inside. (Oh, crap!) Police then arrived on the scene and arrested the now-stink-covered occupant.

Today’s tip is to help you avoid a stinky situation when requiring vendors to background check their workers.

When working with staffing agencies or other vendors supplying labor, you’ll often want to require background checks. But you have a few competing interests, so it matters how you impose this requirement.

First, you probably don’t want to do the background check yourself. For joint employment reasons, you don’t want to play a role in hiring and selection and, for practical reasons, you don’t want to adjudicate background check results on all of the vendor’s candidates. Require them to do the initial screening.

Second, it would be easy to provide the vendor with a list of automatic exclusions, but you don’t want to go there either. Background checks laws generally require an individualized analysis to be done. Avoid creating a “no hire” matrix.

So how can you make sure the vendor conducts an appropriate review of the results and doesn’t send you a worker with a concerning criminal history?

Here’s the strategy I prefer:

1. Require the vendor/staffing agency to perform the background check.

2. Require that they adjudicate the results.

3. But, also require that if they want to place anyone with a prior conviction for theft or violence, they must first notify you and provide a copy of the report and any additional information provided by the candidate.

4. Require that the vendor/staffing agency follow all background check laws.

5. Require that the vendor/staffing agency obtain consent from each candidate to share the results of any background check with your company. They should incorporate that concept into their consent document.

Here’s why I like this process:

First, as a practical matter, a vendor with this arrangement is very unlikely to send you anyone with convictions for theft or violence. They’ll prescreen those out because they know that’s a concern for you.

Second, if the vendor wants to advance someone with one of these convictions, it means one of two things: (a) there may be mitigating factors with this candidate that would support allowing the person to work, or (b) the vendor is being lazy, sending everyone through without running the first level adjudication you’ve required.

If (a), that’s good information. Conduct a second level adjudication. Consider mitigating factors. See how the candidate responds to a pre-adverse action notice. Avoid automatic exclusions and consider whatever facts the candidate provides.

If (b), you need to have a talk with the vendor because they’re not performing the first level adjudication that you’ve required. If you didn’t have this kind of notice process, you might never have known the vendor was being lazy in the adjudication process.

There are several decision points in drafting this kind of clause, but the points listed above are the main items to cover. Variations in drafting may focus on the timing of the convictions, the types of convictions to identify, whether to include drug testing or motor vehicle records checks, and which party performs various tasks related to pre- and post-adverse action notifications.

You’ll also want your contract to make clear that any decision you make that a candidate cannot be placed at your company is not a decision about their overall employment status with the agency. The agency can do what it wants with the person’s employment. All you’re saying is that the agency can’t assign that person to work for you.

By including a process like this in your agreements with staffing agencies and other vendors that supply laborers, you can stay on the right side of the background check law, manage joint employment risks, and still have the opportunity to block candidates who have a criminal history that creates unacceptable risk.

It’s too bad that future background check results for the car thief who got stuck in the port-a-potty won’t include that level of detail. Not that it would make a difference in screening out someone who steals cars, but it would be a fun detail to know. Yuck!

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

© 2023 Todd Lebowitz, posted on WhoIsMyEmployee.com, Exploring Issues of Independent Contractor Misclassification and Joint Employment. All rights reserved.

2018_Web100Badge
 
11.13.23
by

No Unions? No Escape: NLRB’s Joint Employer Rule Imposes New Risks on Businesses Without Unions

TikTok star Matthew Lani earned a substantial following as a 27-year old medical prodigy, having graduated high school at age 16 before becoming a doctor. He posted videos of himself walking through a South African hospital, dishing out medical advice to his followers or selling them medication.

Lani, however, turns out not to be a doctor at all. When the ruse was uncovered and authorities went to arrest him, he said he had to pee and then tried to escape through a bathroom window. TikTok later banned his account.

The NLRB’s new joint employer rule has many employers trying to figure out whether they need a doctor or whether they can avoid the rule’s reach by escaping through a bathroom window.

Today we’ll answer questions about how the new joint employer rule affects non-union businesses.

We have no unions. Does the rule apply to me?

Yes, 100% yes. In fact, companies without unions may be most at risk here. If your business has vendors, suppliers, business partners, or even customers with employees, pay attention.

The point of the rule is that if your business exerts any control over any of the listed seven terms or conditions of employment, you’re a joint employer. In fact, the rule makes you a joint employer even if you merely have the right to exert control over one of these seven terms, even if you never do.

The listed terms and conditions are broader than the usual suspects, and they include control over health and safety matters.

If the other company’s workers are ever in your building while doing their jobs, you might be exercising control over their terms and conditions of employment without realizing it. Read more here.

What if the vendor’s employees don’t have a union?

Still yes. The rule may still directly affect your business’s rights and legal obligations.

What happens if I have no unions but am deemed a joint employer of someone else’s employees?

If you are a joint employer under the new rule, here’s what that means:

(1) If the other company’s employees form a union, your business would be required to participate in the collective bargaining process.

You’d be required to bargain regarding any term or condition that you have the authority to control. That could include your site-wide health and safety rules.

(2) If the other company’s employees have complaints about terms or conditions that your business can control, you cannot retaliate against them for raising these concerns.

Under federal labor law, all employees — including those not in unions — have the right to engage in protected concerted activity without being retaliated against.

Protected concerted activity can mean just about anything that involves more than one employee, including actions by one employee that are intended to seek support from other employees. Like an Instagram post or a Glassdoor review. Ending their assignment or asking the vendor to remove them from the project could be considered unlawful retaliation.

But these are not my employees? Why would I have to do these things?

Because joint employment.

The concept of joint employment is that more than one person can be the employer. If your business is deemed a joint employer of another company’s employees, then under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), you’re also their employer.

What about wage and hour law, unemployment compensation, and workers comp? Would I be a joint employer under those laws too?

No. The new NLRB joint employer rule applies only to the NLRA. Other laws have other tests for determining who is a joint employer.

You can be a joint employer under the NLRA and not a joint employer under other laws. But a finding of joint employment under one law could make it more likely that your business is deemed a joint employer under other laws — particularly if you comply with the new NLRB rule by, let’s say, participating in collective bargaining.

Do I need a real doctor, or will a TikTok doctor be good enough?

All businesses should pay attention to the new NLRB joint employer rule, even if you don’t have unions.

Proactively evaluate your risk of joint employment under the new rule. The whole point of the law is that you may be an employer of other workers without realizing it.

And you can’t escape the reach of the rule by climbing through a bathroom window.

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

© 2023 Todd Lebowitz, posted on WhoIsMyEmployee.com, Exploring Issues of Independent Contractor Misclassification and Joint Employment. All rights reserved.

2018_Web100Badge
 
11.06.23
by

This Will Not Do! Health and Safety Rules May Create Joint Employment under New NLRB Rule

Ginsberg’s Theorem is a parody of the laws of thermodynamics. Generally attributed to the poet Allen Ginsberg, it goes like this:

  1. There is a game.
  2. You can’t win.
  3. You can’t break even.
  4. You can’t even get out of the game.

That’s the conundrum businesses now face when trying to comply with both the NLRB’s new joint employer rule and OSHA requirements (or general safe workplace practices).

Last week we looked at the new NLRB rule on joint employment. This week I want to focus on the most troubling part of that rule — the NLRB’s decision to include “Working conditions related to the safety and health of employees” as an “essential term and condition of employment” for purposes of determining joint employer status.

Businesses often have site-wide, plant-wide, or company-wide health and safety requirements. If you enter this building, you must follow the health and safety rules that apply in this building. For example, you must wear steel-toed shoes to enter the manufacturing floor. Or, you must not enter this high-voltage area without permission. Or, you must walk only on designated pathways to avoid the risk of being hit by a forklift.

Some of these rules are driven by OSHA compliance, some by other governmental regulations, and some by a general desire not to cause grievous injury to other human beings.

Those motivations may now cause your business to be joint employer. The reasoning goes like this:

  1. You have a site-wide safety rule, and anyone in the facility must comply.
  2. Employees of vendors work onsite.
  3. Employees of vendors must comply.

Under the new NLRB joint employer rule, the exercise of control over “working conditions related to the safety and health” of a vendor’s employees would automatically create a joint employment relationship.

More absurd, merely reserving the right to exert control over health and safety conditions would create a joint employer relationship, even if such control is never actually exercised. In other words telling a vendor, if your employees enter our facility, they will will have to follow our site safety rules, would also seem to make you a joint employer.

The NLRB’s position ignores reality and creates a conundrum for businesses: If you comply with health and safety laws, or if you take steps to protect human beings from injury, and those humans are not your employees, the NLRB would now apparently say you’re a joint employer. Beware of showing feelings, showing feelings of an almost human nature.

Queue Pink Floyd “The Trial” from The Wall:

Good morning, Worm your honor
The crown will plainly show
The prisoner who now stands before you
Was caught red-handed showing feelings
Showing feelings of an almost human nature
This will not do
Call the schoolmaster

What to do?

Could the NLRB and OSHA be teaming up to jointly enforce this conundrum? Well, yes.

It just so happens that the NLRB and OSHA have teamed up, and on October 31 — less than a week after the NLRB released its final rule on joint employment — the two agencies jointly released a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). In the MOU, the agencies commit to sharing information and working together to enforce their respective laws, including notifying workers who make OSHA complaints of their NLRA rights, and notifying workers who make NLRA complaints about health and safety of their OSHA rights.

So what are businesses to do?

The answer can’t be to ignore health and safety rules or to waive these rules for non-employees. But the NLRB needs to recognize that exercising control over health and safety conditions does not — or should not — convert a company into a joint employer. Certainly this aspect of the rule will be tested in court, as it seems to go well beyond the bounds of the common law definition of joint employment, and the common law test is supposed to be the joint employer test under the NLRA.

One option for businesses to consider is to tie site-wide health and safety rules to legal requirements whenever possible. Compliance with the law is not supposed to be the type of control that is taken into account under the common law joint employer test. But that approach creates a conundrum too. Be careful that you don’t go too far and say that the law requires something when, in reality, it doesn’t.

Another option might be to revise how site-wide health and safety rules are drafted. Try to try to thread the needle, protecting everyone onsite, but not explicitly setting working conditions for vendor’s employees. It might be possible to draft this way; it might not be. But it’s worth looking at your policy language.

In the meantime, let’s keep an eye on how this new factor is interpreted by administrative law judges and the Board when actual disputes are adjudicated. Let’s also see if court challenges to the new joint employer rule will knock out this troubling provision.

This will not do. Call the schoolmaster!

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

© 2023 Todd Lebowitz, posted on WhoIsMyEmployee.com, Exploring Issues of Independent Contractor Misclassification and Joint Employment. All rights reserved.

2018_Web100Badge
 
11.06.23
by

This Will Not Do! Health and Safety Rules May Create Joint Employment under New NLRB Rule

Ginsberg’s Theorem is a parody of the laws of thermodynamics. Generally attributed to the poet Allen Ginsberg, it goes like this:

  1. There is a game.
  2. You can’t win.
  3. You can’t break even.
  4. You can’t even get out of the game.

That’s the conundrum businesses now face when trying to comply with both the NLRB’s new joint employer rule and OSHA requirements (or general safe workplace practices).

Last week we looked at the new NLRB rule on joint employment. This week I want to focus on the most troubling part of that rule — the NLRB’s decision to include “Working conditions related to the safety and health of employees” as an “essential term and condition of employment” for purposes of determining joint employer status.

Businesses often have site-wide, plant-wide, or company-wide health and safety requirements. If you enter this building, you must follow the health and safety rules that apply in this building. For example, you must wear steel-toed shoes to enter the manufacturing floor. Or, you must not enter this high-voltage area without permission. Or, you must walk only on designated pathways to avoid the risk of being hit by a forklift.

Some of these rules are driven by OSHA compliance, some by other governmental regulations, and some by a general desire not to cause grievous injury to other human beings.

Those motivations may now cause your business to be joint employer. The reasoning goes like this:

  1. You have a site-wide safety rule, and anyone in the facility must comply.
  2. Employees of vendors work onsite.
  3. Employees of vendors must comply.

Under the new NLRB joint employer rule, the exercise of control over “working conditions related to the safety and health” of a vendor’s employees would automatically create a joint employment relationship.

More absurd, merely reserving the right to exert control over health and safety conditions would create a joint employer relationship, even if such control is never actually exercised. In other words telling a vendor, if your employees enter our facility, they will will have to follow our site safety rules, would also seem to make you a joint employer.

The NLRB’s position ignores reality and creates a conundrum for businesses: If you comply with health and safety laws, or if you take steps to protect human beings from injury, and those humans are not your employees, the NLRB would now apparently say you’re a joint employer. Beware of showing feelings, showing feelings of an almost human nature.

Queue Pink Floyd “The Trial” from The Wall:

Good morning, Worm your honor
The crown will plainly show
The prisoner who now stands before you
Was caught red-handed showing feelings
Showing feelings of an almost human nature
This will not do
Call the schoolmaster

What to do?

Could the NLRB and OSHA be teaming up to jointly enforce this conundrum? Well, yes.

It just so happens that the NLRB and OSHA have teamed up, and on October 31 — less than a week after the NLRB released its final rule on joint employment — the two agencies jointly released a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). In the MOU, the agencies commit to sharing information and working together to enforce their respective laws, including notifying workers who make OSHA complaints of their NLRA rights, and notifying workers who make NLRA complaints about health and safety of their OSHA rights.

So what are businesses to do?

The answer can’t be to ignore health and safety rules or to waive these rules for non-employees. But the NLRB needs to recognize that exercising control over health and safety conditions does not — or should not — convert a company into a joint employer. Certainly this aspect of the rule will be tested in court, as it seems to go well beyond the bounds of the common law definition of joint employment, and the common law test is supposed to be the joint employer test under the NLRA.

One option for businesses to consider is to tie site-wide health and safety rules to legal requirements whenever possible. Compliance with the law is not supposed to be the type of control that is taken into account under the common law joint employer test. But that approach creates a conundrum too. Be careful that you don’t go too far and say that the law requires something when, in reality, it doesn’t.

Another option might be to revise how site-wide health and safety rules are drafted. Try to try to thread the needle, protecting everyone onsite, but not explicitly setting working conditions for vendor’s employees. It might be possible to draft this way; it might not be. But it’s worth looking at your policy language.

In the meantime, let’s keep an eye on how this new factor is interpreted by administrative law judges and the Board when actual disputes are adjudicated. Let’s also see if court challenges to the new joint employer rule will knock out this troubling provision.

This will not do. Call the schoolmaster!

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

© 2023 Todd Lebowitz, posted on WhoIsMyEmployee.com, Exploring Issues of Independent Contractor Misclassification and Joint Employment. All rights reserved.

2018_Web100Badge
 
10.23.23
by

It’s Not Lemon Juice: Here’s the One Key Ingredient Missing from Your Staffing Agency Agreements

In 1995, a man robbed two Pittsburgh banks during the day. He wore no disguise and was easily identified by surveillance cameras and arrested. This surprised the man.

The man was surprised because he had covered himself in lemon juice, and he believed that lemon juice made him invisible to video cameras. Obviously, it doesn’t and it didn’t. Lemon juice does not prevent a person from being seen.

Now let’s talk about staffing agency temps and being seen. If your temps are integrated into your workforce, there is a high likelihood you are a joint employer.

If your staffing agency temp improperly pays your temp, and the temp files a wage and hour claim, you can’t just drench yourself in lemon juice and hope not to be seen. Chances are, you’ll be sued too.

If you are a joint employer, you are likely liable for wage and hour violations by the staffing agency, even though you had no control over the staffing agency‘s pay practices. For liability purposes, their mistake is your mistake.

One of the best ways to avoid getting drawn into a class action filed by an agency temp is to require, in your staffing agency agreements, that all temps sign an individual arbitration agreement. All temps should be required, as a condition of being placed at your company, to agree that any claims they have against your company will be resolved in arbitration, on an individual basis, not through a class action.

How do you do this? In three parts.

First, insert in your staffing agency agreement a clause requiring that all temps placed at your facility must first signed an arbitration agreement, a copy of which will be attached to the staffing agency agreement.

Second, draft the individual arbitration agreement exactly the way you want it, and attach it to the staffing agency agreement as an exhibit. Include a class waiver. Consider allowing small claims to be carved out and resolved in small claims court. Consider omitting AAA or JAMS as a designated arbitration administrator, to reduce the risk of mass arbitration filings. You can require arbitration without designating any agency to administer it. The agencies charge high fees, which creates the leverage that makes mass arbitration an effective tool of the plaintiffs’ bar. No arbitration agency = no administrative fees = probably no mass arbitration.

Third, require the agency to maintain copies of these agreements. You want the ability to audit compliance. You can also require the agency to show you a copy of each signed agreement before each temp begins an assignment.

It is frustrating to think that your business could be jointly liable for wage and hour violations by a staffing agency when you have no control over how they pay their employees. But with joint employment, that risk is a reality. You need to prepare for that possibility well in advance.

The staffing agency agreement provides you an ideal opportunity to plan ahead and protect yourself against this possibility.

Lemon juice might be a nice addition to iced tea, but it does not provide any protection against security cameras or class action lawsuits. You’ll need arbitration agreements for that.

Click here for more tips about what should be in your staffing agency agreements.

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

© 2023 Todd Lebowitz, posted on WhoIsMyEmployee.com, Exploring Issues of Independent Contractor Misclassification and Joint Employment. All rights reserved.

2018_Web100Badge
 
09.05.23
by

Going to Rehab? Patients Can Still Be Employees, Says Court

Driving back from Ann Arbor after dropping off my youngest daughter at college, I decided it would be a good time to catch up on some albums I hadn’t heard in a while. Soon I settled on Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black, which was her second and final album, released in 2006. The article liked here describes the conversation with her father that led to the song.

If Amy had gone to rehab, it’s fair to assume she would not have expected to be considered an employee of the rehab center where she was being treated. That was probably the expectation of a number of rehab patients at a Texas facility too, but a court ruling last month found otherwise.

It’s true, the situation in this case was a bit unusual, but it still involves rehab patients being deemed employees of their rehab enter. Here’s how it went down.

The patients, as part of their treatment, were required to undergo vocational, on-the-job training at third parties, where they worked regular shifts. The third parties would pay the rehab center, and the fees were used to offset operating costs. The patients signed agreements that they did not expect compensation for their work.

The rehab center, though, essentially functioned as a staffing agency. It charged the third parties for the patients’ time, even charging time-and-a-half when they worked overtime hours. The patients saw none of that cash, and some of them sued.

A district court in Texas applied the economic realities test and found the patients to be acting as employees of the rehab center / staffing agency when it performed the offsite work. After discovery, the court certified a collective action under the FLSA, and the case is ongoing.

An interlocutory appeal to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals failed, with the appeals court holding that the district court applied the right test for determining whether the patients could have been employees.

This case, while still underway, is a good reminder that employment relationships can be created in unexpected ways. This time it was the rehab center that tried to say, no no no.

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

© 2023 Todd Lebowitz, posted on WhoIsMyEmployee.com, Exploring Issues of Independent Contractor Misclassification and Joint Employment. All rights reserved.

2018_Web100Badge
 
08.28.23
by

Who Pays for Reasonable Accommodations to Staffing Agency Workers? Ask Shorty.

Limb lengthening reasoable accommodation

[This was college move-in week, so I’m a bit behind on writing a new post for this week. Instead I’m re-posting a favorite from 2020. I like this tip for staffing agency agreements!]

Suppose you’ve got a staffing agency worker (we’ll call him Shorty) who’s a bit vertically challenged and is self-conscious about it. He tells you he’s gonna need some time off because he found this:

A limb-lengthening clinic in Las Vegas claims it can make you a few inches taller through minimally invasivce surgery. According to this article on OddityCentral.com, here’s how it works:

“We cut the leg bones – either femur (upper leg bone) or tibia (lower leg bone) – and insert a device that slowly stretches them out which makes you taller permanently.”

“I insert a device that responds to an external remote control that the patient will control at home. Once the device is set, I place screws at the top and bottom of the device to lock into position. This is done on each leg.”

The doc says you then just press a button at home and you’ll stretch by 1 mm a day. Just like nature intended.

So, back to Shorty. Suppose he has this surgery one weekend and comes back to work a bit achy from all the stretching. He wants some extra breaks to get him off his feet. Or he wants you to provide him a stool so he can rest more often from his station on the assembly line. Do you have a reasonable accommodation obligation?

If you’re in HR, you know that weird stuff happens, so maybe you hadn’t considered limb-lengthening, but let’s use this as an excuse to think about relationships with staffing agency workers and what your obligations might be for medical issues.

This is unlikely to be a disability situation, unless Shorty’s stature is due to a medical condition. But you’ll undoubtedly have staffing agency workers who do have disabilities and who do need reasonable accommodations.

That brings us to today’s Tip of the Day:

Consider adding to your staffing agency contracts a clause requiring the agency to pay the expenses for any reasonable accommodations provided to qualified staffing agency employees to allow them to perform their job functions.

Accomodations can sometimes be expensive, and it’s not unforeseeable that staffing agency workers will need accommodations at some point. Plan ahead, and build this contingency into the contract.

A clause like that may lengthen your contract a bit, but this lengthening can be done in a sentence or two — with no surgical intervention, no cuts in your femur or tibia, and no insertion of a stretch button in your leg. That’s the kind of lengthening I’d be much more inclined to try. I’ll leave my limbs just the way they are.

2018_Web100Badge

© 2020 Todd Lebowitz, posted on WhoIsMyEmployee.com, Exploring Issues of Independent Contractor Misclassification and Joint Employment. All rights reserved.

Need training on avoiding independent contractor misclassification claims? Hey, I do that!  

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

08.21.23
by

Snake & a Hawk: Illinois Passes Temp Worker Law, Imposes New Burdens on Companies

Not a hawk, but I like this picture I took in Utah a couple years ago

A woman in Texas was mowing her lawn last month when she was suddenly attacked by a snake and a hawk — at the same time. The hawk had been carrying the snake but dropped it. It landed on poor Peggy Jones. The snake wrapped itself around her arm. Still hungry, the hawk dove at Peggy to retrieve its tasty treat, clawing at her and the snake, and ripping up her arm in the process. Eventually the hawk won and flew off with the snake. Peggy had severe cuts and bruises, and her husband had to finish mowing the lawn.

We’ve got another double attack to report, this one in the world of temporary staffing.

Last week we wrote about New Jersey’s new temporary staffing law, which imposes new burdens on companies using temp staffing. Not wanting to be left out of the fun, Illinois has followed suit with a similar law.

The Illinois law imposes several new burdens on companies using temp staffing workers.

I’ve listed those obligations here, on the BakerHostetler Employment Law Spotlight blog. I list eight things that companies in Illinois will need to know.

I haven’t yet decided which law is the hawk and which is the snake. But both will inflict some pain.

Meanwhile, enjoy this song called Snake Hawk, by The Budos Band.

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

© 2023 Todd Lebowitz, posted on WhoIsMyEmployee.com, Exploring Issues of Independent Contractor Misclassification and Joint Employment. All rights reserved.

2018_Web100Badge
 
05.30.23
by

In the Staffing World, What Is MSP and VMS, and How Can they Help?

In 1979, my sister and I watched a kids’ movie called C.H.O.M.P.S., a “comic science fiction family film” (according to Wikipedia), which featured a Benji-lookalike border terrier named CHOMPS. Except the dog wasn’t really a terrier, and wasn’t even really a dog.

C.H.O.M.P.S. was an acronym for Canine Home Protection System, and the terrier was a robot [insert plot of every children’s movie here] invented by a brilliant kid, who then outsmarts bumbling adults who try to kidnap the dog but prove inept and not nearly as clever as our young hero.

The movie scores an abysmal 29% on Rotten Tomatoes and I don’t remember much about it, except that my sister and I still talk about it.

Although we’re all grown up now, we’re still overrun with acronyms. Two acronyms often appear in the context of retaining contingent labor, and if your company makes frequent use of temp staffing or other contingent workers, these may be good to know.

First, there’s MSP. An MSP is a Managed Service Provider. MSPs can manage many different things, but in the context of employment law and the contingent workforce, they can manage temporary staffing needs for a business. Generally, they will contract directly with multiple staffing agencies and taking the laboring oar in overseeing those relationships. MSPs can also identify and retain independent contractors. They will monitor spend and can produce all sorts of nifty reports. If your business uses an MSP, then when you need temp labor or other contingent workers, you tell the MSP what you’re looking for, and the MSP does the rest.

Next, there’s VMS. VMS stands for Vendor Management System. It is an online portal through which contingent workforce staffing needs can be arranged and managed. MSPs generally use VMSs, but a company can also use a VMS without an MSP.

When beginning a relationship with an MSP, sophisticated businesses will take a hand-on approach in negotiating the terms of service with the MSP, as well as negotiating (or providing) the form agreements that the MSP will enter into with staffing agencies and independent contractors. Your company is not a direct party to those agreements but, rather, is a third party beneficiary.

Those staffing agency agreements should generally include the same protections against joint employer liability that you’d include if you contracted with the staffing agency directly. Click here for Ten Things That Should Be in your Staffing Agency Agreements But Probably Aren’t.

You’ll also probably want all contingent workers retained through the MSP to sign arbitration agreements with classs action waivers, as well as individual agreements addressing the protection of your confidential information and ownership of any IP created during the assignment.

Bonus tip: Be careful not to say that all deliverables are “works made for hire.” Under some laws, including in California, declaring deliverables to be “works made for hire” automatically converts the relationship into employment. Bummer. Use assignment instead. You can read more about that topic here.

For companies that make frequent use of contingent labor, MSPs and VMSs can save a lot of time and aggravation. When engaging MSPs, it’s worth the up-front investment to renegotiate and modify the template agreements that the MSP will use on your company’s behalf.

If you’re later alleged to be a direct or joint employer of the contingent workers, well-drafted agreements will provide vital home protection — even better than you could get from C.H.O.M.P.S.

Bonus Fun Fact: Red Buttons was in this movie. It’s fun to say Red Buttons. Try it. Really. Say it aloud. But say it quietly in case someone is listening. You’ll like it and will probably keep saying it quietly to yourself all day, with a slight smile, because no one else is in on your little secret.

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

© 2023 Todd Lebowitz, posted on WhoIsMyEmployee.com, Exploring Issues of Independent Contractor Misclassification and Joint Employment. All rights reserved.

2018_Web100Badge
 
05.22.23
by

Today’s Riddle: Should I Cap a Temp’s Service at 6 months? 12 months?

I like riddles. How could you not? Here are two. Answers are at the bottom of the post:

1. What has to be broken before you can use it?
2. I’m tall when I’m young, and I’m short when I’m old. What am I?

Getting back to business, here’s a question I have been asked many times. It seems a bit like a riddle, with no clear answer and requiring careful thought. But I’m going to declare No Riddle. That’s because I think there’s a straightforward answer, and it might not be what you were thinking.

Here’s the question (in case you are among the 0% of today’s readers who skipped this post’s headline):

Should we cap a temp’s assignment at 6 months? 12 months?

To answer today’s question, I’m going to have to ask you two questions. (Sorry, that’s how we play this game.)

Question 1: As temps, my assumption is that they are intermingled with the company’s employee workforce, doing the same thing as employees, working side by side with employees, and reporting to the company’s supervisors. Is that accurate?

Question 2: Are they employed by a staffing agency and treated by that staffing agency as its W2 employees?

If you answered yes to both, then the amount of time temps are assigned to the company will almost certainly have no bearing on their status. They will be employees of the agency and probably also joint employees of the company. There are various joint employment tests, and we can go through them (fun!) but it would be largely an academic exercise.

From a practical business standpoint, we should assume that any time the answer to my two questions are yes, these two conclusions will follow:

First, The entity receiving the services is likely to be a joint employer under the FLSA, NLRA, anti-discrimination law, and state laws, regardless of whether the temp is assigned for five months or five years. When temps are intermingled with employees in a staff aug situation, there is very likely joint employment, regardless of which test is applied. Arguments could be made under some tests that there is no joint employment, but for purposes of trying to answer the question above in a practical business-oriented way, I would assume there’s going to be joint employment.

Second, joint employment in this scenario is a risk inherent in working with temp staffing agencies. But that’s not necessarily a problem. Joint employment is not unlawful and, with one exception, joint employment only becomes a problem if the staffing agency/primary employer fails to do something it is legally required to do, such as pay overtime or minimum wage. In that event, both companies would be jointly liable if there is a joint employment relationship.

The one exception is the NLRA. If the company is a joint employer, then the various protections of the NLRA start to cross over the temp employee and direct employee populations, such that if the agency workers were to organize, the company might have to bargain with them; or there could be a mixed unit; or if agency workers picketed the company, it would not be illegal secondary picketing.

So, if the answer to both of my questions is yes, then I would not be concerned with the duration of assignment. The company is very likely a joint employer already.

Some companies have a practice of not engaging temps for more than six months or year before deciding either they don’t fit or they should be hired directly. But there is no rule of thumb, and this sort of practice is often implemented based on the misunderstanding that capping a temp’s service time would reduce the risk of joint employment in a staff aug situation.

In reality, it’s unlikely to make any difference. In a staff aug situation, once you’re in the swimming pool of joint employment, you’re wet. It doesn’t matter if you’re on the top step or in the deep end. And once you’re a joint employer, you might as well exercise as much control as you want. You can embrace it at that point.

The best way to protect the company against the risks and consequences of joint employment is in the contract with the staffing agency. Here are Ten Things That Should Be in Your Staffing Agency Agreement But Probably Aren’t.

On the other hand, if you would answer no to either of my two questions, then limiting the duration of the assignment could be helpful in reducing the risk of independent contractor misclassification, especially if the workers are 1099 contractors.

If the answer to either of the questions is no, then we’d have to dive deeper into the facts to be able to say whether limiting the duration of the assignment would make any difference at all.

So, did you get the answer to the two riddles? Scroll down to see the answers.

.

.

.

.

.

.

1. An egg
2. A candle

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

© 2023 Todd Lebowitz, posted on WhoIsMyEmployee.com, Exploring Issues of Independent Contractor Misclassification and Joint Employment. All rights reserved.

2018_Web100Badge