Category Archives: Students

04.25.22
by

Beware of Snakes: Court of Appeals to Decide Whether Student-Athletes Are Employees under FLSA

Snakes have been in the news lately. A Maryland man was recently found dead in his home, killed by a venomous snake bite. This might seem surprising, until you learn that the same man kept 124 pet snakes in his house, including rattlesnakes, cobras, black mambas and a 14-foot-long Burmese python.

I also learned this week of a horrifying tourist attraction in Manitoba called the Snakes of Narcisse, where you can view “tens of thousands of red-sided garter snakes as they slither to the surface from their winter dens.” Tourists can view the dens and the snakes’ “mating balls,” in which “one [unlucky] female is surrounded by up to one hundred males.” Brackets are mine, since this can’t be fun for the snakestress, no matter how many cocktails are involved.

According to Quizlet, six colleges and universities have snakes for mascots. I won’t spoil the surprise. You can click here for the big reveal.

For student-athletes at these six schools, plus those at every other non-snake-themed college, there’s a Third Circuit case that’s worth watching.

The Third Circuit has agreed to hear a case that poses the following question: “Whether NCAA Division I student athletes can be employees of the colleges and universities they attend for purposes of the Fair Labor Standards Act solely by virtue of their participation in interscholastic athletics.“

If the Third Circuit says yes, student-athletes may be entitled to millions of dollars in back wages under the FLSA. A ‘yes’ ruling would be deadly venom to just about every non-major sports program, since schools have no budget to pay wages to student-athletes. Very few programs in very few sports actually make money.

For those who brought this suit and think they are advocating for the student, be careful what you wish for. If the Third Circuit rules that student-athletes are entitled to be paid, college sports are largely dead. Women’s sports would take the biggest hit, as would every other program that isn’t a top-tier college football or basketball program raking in the cash.

This is a case to watch closely. If student-athletes are entitled to be paid, there would no longer be any distinction between amateurs and professionals. The whole concept of the student-athlete — and almost all of college sports — would go the way of the Round Island Burrowing Boa. That’s an extinct snake that used to live in Mauritius, says wikipedia.

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

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

2018_Web100Badge
 
10.04.21
by

Nontoxic Bullets? NLRB General Counsel Wants to Ruin College Football by Calling Athletes “Employees”

Johnnie Poe, Princeton footballer. NYPL Public Collection.

One of my favorite twitter accounts is @ACrimeADay, which reminds us of arcane things that are against the law. A few recent gems:

  • 18 USC §1865 & 36 CFR §2.16(f) make it a federal crime to make an unreasonable noise while a horse is passing by in a national park.
  • 42 USC §271(a) & 21 CFR §1250.44(b) make it a federal crime for an airline to provide a brush for the common use of passengers on a flight.
  • 16 USC §707 & 50 CFR §21.55(c)(2) make it a federal crime to kill a barn owl in Hawaii by shooting it, unless you use nontoxic bullets.

There are lots of ridiculous laws. If it’s up to the NLRB’s new General Counsel, we’re about to see another one — and it may ruin college football as we know it.

In a memo issued last week, the NLRB’s General Counsel and chief prosecutor, Jennifer Abruzzo, announced that her office now take the position that college student athletes are employees of their universities, with full rights to bargain collectively, strike, and file unfair labor practice charges.

Her analysis is based on a Right to Control Test. She thinks that universities control the working conditions of student-athletes in a way that makes them employees under the test. She explains this in the memo, if you care to read the details.

The memo also takes the position that universities’ use of the phrase “student-athlete” instead of “employee” is itself an unfair labor practice because it intentionally misleads these students employees into thinking that they do not have Section 7 rights. Her position is directly contrary to current Board law, established in Velox Express (discussed here).

And it gets worse. Because the NLRB has jurisdiction over private employers but not public ones, her position applies only to private universities, not public ones. That means — if her memo becomes law — that Northwestern’s football players are employees, but Ohio State’s are not.

And she sets up the NCAA as a joint employer, alleging that it too controls the working conditions of these students.

Abruzzo is a former union lawyer, so it’s not surprising that she subscribes to the worldview that everyone’s an employee, but for this to be the official prosecutorial position of the Board is inane. With Democratic Board appointees now holding a 3-2 majority on the Board, it feels like only a matter of time before the right case comes along and the NLRB rubber stamps her position as Board law.

Let’s imagine how this plays out in real life:

  • It’s the end of a long practice, and two players tell Coach they’re not going to run that last required wind sprint because they think it’s just too much. Coach says to run anyway because I’m the coach. Coach disciplines the players by not playing them or demoting them on the depth chart or whatever. Based on the memo, that might be an unfair labor practice because the employer is taking adverse action against employees for engaging in protected concerted activity.
  • Coach tells his team not to criticize the program publicly because we’re a team and we need to speak with one voice. Based on the memo, that could be an unfair labor practice because employers cannot prohibit employees from speaking out collectively about working conditions.
  • When the fifth- and sixth-string senior running backs refuse to show up for practice as a way of protesting Coach’s decision not to play them in last week’s blowout win, Coach tells them they’re off the team. Under the Abruzzo memo, that might be an unfair labor practice.
  • At a press conference, the athletic director is asked about team discipline and responds that these are “student-athletes” and not “employees” and they’ll do what Coach says and they’ll do it quietly, without objection, if they want to play. Under the Abruzzo worldview, that sounds like an unfair labor practice too.

Let’s play this out a little further. If the reason student-athletes are employees is because of the Right to Control Test analysis, then wouldn’t the same analysis apply to other laws that use the Right to Control Test? The Affordable Care Act and ERISA use Right to Control Tests. Could it become the law that student-athletes must be made an offer of coverage under ACA? Would the school have to allow the players to participate in employee retirement programs?

And what about the Economic Realities Test used for determining whether someone is an employee under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which requires minimum wage and overtime? The Economic Realities Test is generally viewed as more expansive and inclusive than the Right to Control Test. If Abruzzo’s position is embraced by the NLRB and later affirmed by the U.S. Courts of Appeal, would that open the door for requiring private universities to pay student-athletes a minimum wage and overtime?

This is sounding like Absurdistan (which, by the way, it the title of a pretty entertaining book by Gary Shtenygart).

I’m making unreasonable noises just thinking about all of this. Good think I’m not in a national park with a horse nearby or I’d really be in trouble.

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

© 2021 Todd Lebowitz, posted on WhoIsMyEmployee.com, Exploring Issues of Independent Contractor Misclassification and Joint Employment. All rights reserved.

2018_Web100Badge
 
09.26.19
by

NLRB Wants New Rule To Prevent Student Teaching Assistants From Joining Unions

Flip flops NLRB union graduate students 2019Summer may be over, but the National Labor Relations Board isn’t ready to put away its flip flops.

It’s been a busy few months, with the NLRB releasing a number of recent decisions that change Obama-era interpretations of federal labor law.

On Friday, the Board released a new proposed rule that would declare college teaching assistants to be non-employees, meaning they cannot form unions. The proposed rule would declare these graduate students to be just students under federal labor law, not both students and employees of their institutions. The new rule would apply even though the students are paid.

The Board’s explanation for the proposed rule is that graduate students are primarily students and the paid work is primarily for an educational purpose.

If this rule were to pass, it would reverse a 2016 NLRB decision, which found that Columbia University students assistants were also employees of the school because “they perform work, at the direction of the university, for which they are compensated.”

The 2016 decision reversed a 2004 George W. Bush-era Board decision, which found that Brown University student assistants were not employees because their relationship to the university was primarily educational.

The 2004 decision reversed a 2000 Clinton-era Board decision finding that NYU graduate student assistants were employees that could form unions.

The 2000 decision reversed a 1974 decision, which found that Stanford University graduate students were not employees because their paid roles as student assistants was primarily educational.

I think you see what’s happening here.

The new development is just that the Board has proposed a new rule. The rule, if enacted, would change the offical interpretation of the National Labor Relations Act to be that graduate student assistants are not employees. Notably, despite the flip flops listed above, the statute has not changed. But depending on which political party has a majority on the 5-member Board (currently 4-member Board), the Board’s interpretation of the National Labor Relations Act changes and changes again.

The current Board seems to think that by making its changes through rulemaking, rather than through Board decisions on actual cases, maybe its interpretation will be stickier in the long run. I doubt it.

Even if the proposed rule passes, it seems inevitable that whenever the next Democratic-majority Board is in place, it will switch back to the view that graduate student assistants are employees and can form unions.

There’s a 60-day comment period on the proposed rule, then the Board can decide whether to pass it as written, modify it, or scrap it.

In any event, students are back in school, and so far the weather seems good enough to keep using flip flops — at least in Washington, D.C., at the National Labor Relations Board.

See you at the beach.

2018_Web100Badge

© 2019 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.

 

07.22.19
by

Can Study Time be Considered Employment? Yes, Says a Federal Court

Is study time compensable employmentSam Cooke admittedly didn’t know much about history, didn’t know much about biology, didn’t know much about a science book, and didn’t know much about the French he took.

That’s probably because he didn’t study.

Studying can have its rewards, but can those rewards include being paid to study? Yes, says a federal court in Arizona—at least under one set of facts.

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), time spent working must be compensated. In Julian v. Swift Transportation, the court had to decide whether study time was working time.

As part of the new hire trainee process, potential new drivers for a transportation company were provided a three-day period of orientation, then were sent for six weeks of paid training with a mentor. During the paid training period, the newbies were required to study in preparation for company-specific new driver tests. Some of the study time was spent on the clock during the 8-hour training day, but some of the required study time was performed while off-the-clock in “sleeper berth” time.

The court ruled that, because the company actively stressed the importance of studying, even during sleeper berth time, this time was compensable “employment.” In this case, the study time had to be paid.

This ruling is limited to the facts of this case and certainly does not mean that all study time for new hires is compensable. Sorry, Sam Cooke. But here, where workers were on the road with a mentor for a six-week training program and were expected to study frequently, the study time was determined to be working time.

Now, I don’t claim to be an A student, but I’m trying to be. For maybe by being an A student, baby, I can win your love for me. (And an extra paycheck?)

© 2019 Todd Lebowitz, posted on WhoIsMyEmployee.com, Exploring Issues of Independent Contractor Misclassification and Joint Employment. All rights reserved.

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

2018_Web100Badge

 

06.11.18
by

You can’t pay for English whales (the queen owns those), but you should pay summer interns – as employees, not contractors

Whale summer internships paid unpaid employee independent contractorSome things you can’t pay for. All of the whales and sturgeon that live in English waters, for example, belong to the queen. Under an English statute from 1324, “The king shall have wreck of the sea throughout the realm, whales and sturgeons taken in the sea or elsewhere within the realm, except in certain places privileged by the king.”

So if you wanted to buy an English whale this summer, you may be out of luck. U.S. business should be spending their money elsewhere — like on summer interns! Yes, let’s talk about summer interns. Paid or unpaid? Employee or independent contractor? Have I captured your attention? I knew it. Read on.

Paid or unpaid? The rules have been changing to make it easier to have unpaid interns, provided the internships have educational value and are not for the benefit of the business. This post provides some guidelines. The bottom line, though, is that it’s safest to pay your summer interns. Continue reading →

01.08.18
by

Free Bird! Dep’t of Labor Rewrites Test for Unpaid Internships

chicks-2965846_1920Lots of things are free in the world of music. There’s Free Bird (Lynyrd Skynyrd), Free Money (Patti Smith), and according to Dire Straits, you can get your money for nothin’ and your chicks for free.

For the most part, though, you’ve got to pay for your interns. Or do you?

On Friday, the DOL announced it was reversing its 2010 guidance on Internship Programs under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Since 2010, the DOL had been taking the position that unpaid interns are employees and must be paid unless each of six factors were present. Here’s the old DOL fact sheet and six-factor test.

The DOL has now changed course, after four U.S. Court of Appeals decisions rejected the DOL’s test as too strict. The DOL now opted for a balancing test. The balancing test asks whether the intern or the business is the “primary beneficiary” of the internship.

The DOL’s new guidance adopts the same balancing test recently favored by the courts.

Continue reading →

10.30.17
by

Court Rules That Shadowing Dad at Work Might Require Payment

Shadow - Trainee or Employee death-2577486_1280In the 1930s, the popular radio program The Shadow featured an invisible avenger who possessed “the mysterious power to cloud men’s minds, so they could not see him.” (He supposedly picked up this power in East Asia, which must have seemed mysterious in an era before Kung Pao Chicken was widely available.)

Eighty years later, “shadowing” has a different meaning. An unpaid trainee follows around a more experienced employee as a way to learn the business. Few trainees have mastered the power of invisibility [Note: only the best ones have, and they’re hard to find … ba-dum-bum], and often the nature of being a trainee involves getting in the way of the real work.

Scott Axel was a trainee who shadowed his father at an automobile wholesaler in Florida. He had no expectation of pay, and the business said it would not hire him. As a favor to his dad, the business let him learn the business by shadowing his dad.

Continue reading →

05.11.17
by

Can an Intern be an Independent Contractor? (Answers revealed in James Bond movies)

IMG_1068Among James Bond films, Rotten Tomatoes ranks Never Say Never Again 18th out of 26, with a mediocre 63% rating. (Bond movie quiz at the end of this post, for patient readers.)

It’s a cliche saying, I know, but my first reaction when asked this question was, “I’d never say never, but it’s hard to imagine a scenario where that would work.” (That was also my second reaction and my third. Let’s just say that’s my reaction.)

Let’s run this through the gauntlet. Remember, it’s not your choice whether an intern is an independent contractor or an employee. The law decides that for you, based on the nature of the relationship.

Test #1: Economic Realities Test. Under federal wage and hour laws, an independent Continue reading →

04.17.17
by

Unpaid Internships: Six Tips For Avoiding Minimum Wage Requirements

student unpaid internship frog-1339892_1920It’s summer intern hiring season. Can your interns be unpaid? If you pay them something, can you pay a small stipend that amounts to less than minimum wage?

Wage and hour laws dictate when a summer intern must be paid like a regular employee, with a required minimum wage and eligibility for overtime. Seasonal amusement and recreational establishments (such as summer camps or some amusement parks) may qualify for a special exemption, but this post is focused on more conventional year-round businesses.

Here are six tips for maintaining unpaid internship status: Continue reading →

01.12.17
by

You Knew College Athletes Weren’t Employees, But Did You Know Why?

college-athletesYou knew that college athletes were not employees of their schools, but did you know the legal reason why?

Let’s look at a recent case that arose under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

In early 2015, a group of student-athletes sued several schools and the NCAA, alleging that they had put in thousands of hours of work for the benefit of their school, without compensation. The student-athletes alleged that they should have been paid at least a minimum wage, as required under the FLSA.

Continue reading →