by Todd Lebowitz

Green or Yellow: What’s the Difference Between Co-Employment and Joint Employment?

There’s an ongoing debate in my family over whether tennis balls are green or yellow. I sit firmly in the green camp and can’t see the yellow. My family thinks I am an idiot.

Turns out we’re both right. (Read into that as you wish.)

Tennis balls are officially Optic Yellow, but on the color wheel, that’s the same color as Electric Lime. There’s been some serious investigative journalism devoted to this topic, and the debate rages on. See here and here.

While Optic Yellow and Electric Lime may be the same, co-employment and joint employment are definitely not the same. Here’s today’s explainer.

In both co-employment and joint employment, there are two employers. For our purposes, the secondary employer is the one that benefits from the workers’ services. The primary employer is the one that pays them.

Co-employment is a voluntary arrangement in which one entity (often a Professional Employer Organization, or PEO) agrees to perform administrative/HR tasks for another entity, usually including providing benefits, HR services, and taking on the obligations of an employer in each jurisdiction where the workers will be.

The company that will benefit from the workers’ services selects them, determines their pay, determines their schedules, terminates them, and generally decides on all terms and conditions of employment. The company then sends them to the co-employer (PEO) to be hired and onboarded for the sole purpose of providing services to the secondary employer.

Unlike an employee leasing or staffing agency relationship, when a co-employment relations ends, the employees stay with the secondary employer. They don’t go back into a pool.

In co-employment, the employees and all parties acknowledge up front that this is a co-employment relationship, with the terms and conditions of employment dictated by the secondary employer. The offer letter and employee handbook will generally explain to the new hire the nature of the co-employment relationship.

No one worries about being deemed in a co-employment relationship because co-employment is an intentional choice. It’s not something that a court declares.

Joint employment, on the other hand, is a legal conclusion, often not a relationship that is acknowledged by the parties. The most common scenario for joint employment is when a staffing agency provides workers for staff augmentation, with the workers fully integrated into the secondary employer’s workforce and supervised by the secondary employer’s managers.

Joint employment can arise when labor services are provided by a staffing agency, a subcontractor, or a consulting firm. In a joint employment situation, there are two distinct employers. The staffing agency, subcontractor, or consulting firm is the primary employer and, if there’s not joint employment, then it’s the sole employer.

The primary employer determines wages and benefits and often selects the workers to be hired. Those workers often provide services for multiple companies, either sequentially or simultaneously.

If a secondary employer terminates a worker’s assignment, the worker stays with the primary employer. The primary employer can reassign the worker to another job site or make its own determination whether to keep the worker employed. You’ll want your staffing agency agreement to make clear that you can end a worker’s assignment but that you have no right to control the worker’s employment status with the agency.

There is a contractual relationship between the two companies that one will provide services for the other. But joint employment is not a foregone conclusion. Joint employment can exist, for example, if the secondary company makes decisions about the workers’ wages, working conditions, schedules, training, etc. To oversimplify a bit, joint employment is somewhat likely in a staffing services situation; less likely when retaining professional outside consultants.

Unlike with co-employment, joint employment does not involve a trilateral understanding among the worker and the two companies that the worker is employed by both.

Generally, the secondary company will argue that it does not control wages and working conditions, is therefore not a joint employer, and is therefore is not liable for any employment-related errors by the primary employer. The determination of whether joint employment exists is a legal determination, not based on an agreement among the parties and the worker.

What you’re worried about, therefore, is a finding of joint employment. Joint employment is not unlawful, but it creates unplanned risks and liabilities for the secondary employer. For example, if a staffing agency fails to pay its employees as required by law, the secondary employer is fully liable for the underpayment and the other legal consequences, even though it had no control over the primary employer’s payroll practices.

For more fun facts about joint employment, choose the Joint Employment category of posts in the blog. But be mindful of the date of the post. In the world of joint employment and determine when joint employment exists, the rules are always changing. So that’s fun, right?

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10.24.22

by Todd Lebowitz

Silly Old Moo: Watch What You Say When Trying to Preserve Independent Contractor Status

The parliament of New Zealand maintains a list of words and phrases that are considered unbecoming to say about another member and are therefore banned from use during parliamentary debates. These include:

His brains could revolve inside a peanut shell for a thousand years without touching the sides.
Energy of a tired snail returning home from a funeral.
Could go down the Mount Eden sewer and come up cleaner than he went in.
Silly old moo.

Words matter when trying to preserve a worker’s independent contractor classification too. Avoid possessives when referring to independent contractors, who are not “your” anything. The terminology you use should be consistent with the concept that the contractors are in business for themselves.

Check your company’s website and public facing materials and try to avoid phrases like this:

Our technicians [or representatives or whatever]
Our team of [whatevers]
We install/repair/other verb

Other words and phrases can also suggest employment and should be avoided when referring to contractors:

Hire (instead, retain)
Wages (instead, compensation)
Assignment (instead, project or engagement)
Duties (instead, services)

Using terminology that does not sound like employment will help when trying to show a court of agency that the relationship is not employment.

And never, ever tell anyone that your independent contractor’s brains could revolve inside a peanut shell for a thousand years without touching the sides. That’s just unbecoming.

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10.17.22

by Todd Lebowitz

But the Onions! DOL’s Contractor Rule May Cause Companies Heartburn

Have you ever gone to a new restaurant that took over the space where one of your favorite restaurants used to be?

You’ve been wanting to try the new restaurant. You get there and the menu looks similar, so you order the fettucine with shrimp because that dish was always really good at the old place. It arrives and it looks the same but you’re not sure that it tastes quite the same.

Maybe the sauce tastes a little different but it’s hard to tell for sure. Then, you get home later that night and you feel a little queasy. You realize that the new restaurant must have put onions in the sauce. You probably didn’t notice because when the dish was served it looked just like it did at the old restaurant.

But you’re not supposed to eat onions, and now you have to wait and see if you’re going to start cramping up from eating the onions or if you’re going to be just fine. You really just don’t know. It could just as easily go either way, and now all you can do is wait.

That’s kind of how I feel after reading the Department of Labor’s proposed new independent contractor rule, released earlier this week.

Click here to read the rest of the story, originally published in Law360 on 10/13/2022.

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10.10.22

by Todd Lebowitz

No Bear Wrestling? Poorly Drafted D.C. Law Turns Contractors Into Employees, Sort Of

According to this article in USA Today, state and local legislatures pass all kinds of strange laws. In Tennessee, you can’t hold office if you’ve been in a duel. In North Carolina, you can’t hold a meeting if you are dressed in costume. In Louisiana, it’s illegal to wrestle a bear.

Other times, legislatures pass laws that make sense, but they do it in a way that’s sloppy or lazy. A recent amendment passed by the D.C. Council falls into this second category.

Like many state and local anti-discrimination laws, the D.C. Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination and harassment in the workplace. An amendment to the Act, effective 10/1/2022, expanded the law’s protections to most independent contractors. Seems reasonable, right?

But the way the law extends these protections is lazy drafting, and the lazy drafting creates problems for those of us who are careful about preserving the distinctions between employees and independent contractors.

The amendment expands the Act’s coverage by changing the definition of “employee.” Under the amended text, the term “employee” now also includes individuals “working or seeking work as an independent contractor,” as well as unpaid interns. The amendment then excludes some independent contractors from coverage, explaining that an independent contractor for purposes of the Act “does not mean a service vendor who provides a discrete service to an individual customer.”

There are two problems here. First, starting at the end, what does the exception really mean? I presume the exception exists to carve out rideshare and delivery services, but if that’s what they meant, they should have said that. It’s unclear. Maybe some guidance will be issued later.

But the larger problem is the second one, and that’s what I want to focus on here. Instead of amending the law so that it applies to “employees and covered independent contractors,” the law lazily changes the definition of “employee” to say that “the term ‘employee’ includes … an individual working or seeking work as an ‘independent contractor.’”

But the word employee (as everyone commonly understands it) doesn’t include individuals working or seeking work as independent contractors. That’s the whole point of differentiating them by calling them independent contractors.

Let’s try an analogy. If you wanted to expand coverage for a law that applies to police officers so that the same protections applied to fire fighters, you wouldn’t redefine the term “police officers” to “include” fire fighters. You’d say the law applies to police officers and fire fighters.

The same principle applies in every day life. If you went to the ice cream store and ordered vanilla soft serve, you’d be unhappy if the clerk handed you a vanilla-chocolate twist. You’d complain, but the clerk would point you to the sign on the wall that says “We define vanilla to include chocolate.” That’s dumb and would never happen. I think. But I would check twice before ordering soft serve at the D.C. Council cafeteria.

Preserving independent contractor status is already complicated, with so many different state and local tests for determining who is an employee and who is a contractor. We don’t need lazy amendments that define the term “employee” in a way that just includes “independent contractors.” It makes everything more confusing for everyone, especially when it remains important to differentiate between contractors and employees in every other context.

We don’t even need to look beyond D.C. to see how the D.C. Council has messed this up. Let’s compare the amended Human Rights Act to other D.C. laws.

The D.C. unemployment compensation law uses a common law test to determine whether someone is an employee or an independent contractor. So does D.C. wage and hour law. The D.C. workers comp law uses a different “relative nature of work test,” but that’s a balancing test too. The point is, under these other D.C. laws, the term “employee” definitely does not include independent contractors, and there’s a way of differentiating which is which.

It’s laudable that the D.C. Council wants to extend anti-discrimination protections to independent contractors. Some state laws do that too. (Federal anti-discrimination laws do not.) But don’t lazily do it by calling independent contractors “employees.” Because they’re not.

At least in D.C. it’s still legal to wrestle a bear.

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10.03.22

by Todd Lebowitz

Curse of the Lamprey: Company Faces Costly Negligence Suit Because It Was NOT a Joint Employer

*Henry I of England, possibly playing with a toy castle*

The history of the Middle Ages is filled with tales of unusual and unexpected deaths. In 1016, for example, Edmund Ironside, King of England, was allegedly stabbed while on a toilet by an assassin hiding underneath. In 1131, Crown Prince Philip of France died while riding his horse in Paris after the animal tripped over a black pig that was running out of a dung heap. In 1135, Henry I of England supposedly died after eating too many lampreys, against his physician’s advice. A lamprey, for those keeping score, is a long, jawless fish with a funnel-like sucking mouth. (“Doctor, how many of these delicious-looking sea creatures may I ingest for dinner?”)

While Henry I might have fared better had he listened to medical advice, Edmund and Philip seem to have just found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This can happen to businesses too when retaining non-employee laborers.

But the cautionary tale in today’s post is different from those I usually write about. We often discuss here how businesses can take steps to avoid being deemed a joint employer. Today’s post, however, is about an unexpected bad outcome that can arise from not being a joint employer.

The culprit here is not a dung-covered black pig or a toilet assassin. The culprit here is workers’ compensation law.

As we all know, workers’ compensation law covers employees only. When workers’ compensation law applies, it is the only course of recovery for a worker injured on the job. There’s no suing for negligence, no tort claims, and no personal injury lawsuits.

Being a joint employer, in other words, can limit your liability when a worker is injured on the job.

A recent Texas case illustrates the point.

King Aerospace is a military contractor. It often relied on another company, ATG, to find maintenance specialists. ATG would identify and hire the specialists, who would then go work for King. ATG treated the workers as its employees and reported their pay on a Form W-2.

One of the workers supplied by ATG fell off a ladder while working on a project for King. He filed a personal injury suit against King Aerospace, alleging that King was negligent in causing his injuries. King responded by arguing that it was the man’s joint employer, meaning that the injuries would subject to Texas workers’ compensation law. When workers’ compensation law applies, workers’ compensation law provides the only available remedy for a workplace injury. There’s no separate personal injury suit.

A jury was asked to determine whether the man was King’s employee at the time of the injury, and the jury said he was not. King was therefore exposed to the full range of damages available in a negligence lawsuit. Hey, watch out for that black pig.

King appealed the decision, arguing that it was a joint employer as a matter of law. The Texas Court of Appeals, however, ruled that there were issues of fact and the jury was entitled to find that there was no joint employment relationship. The case now goes back to the trial court, where King Aerospace will face tort liability under personal injury laws.

Businesses are usually looking to avoid joint employer status. But as this case shows, when there’s a serious workplace injury involved, joint employer status can actually be beneficial.

The decision does not address whether ATG had workers’ compensation coverage for the worker. Presumably it did not. The case is also a good reminder to make sure that in agreements with companies supplying labor to your business (such as staffing agencies), the supplier company should agree to provide workers’ compensation coverage.

An agreement like that between King and ATG that could have prevented King’s bad outcome here. Or King could have taken more direct steps to establish itself as the man’s joint employer, even if that move seems counter intuitive.

On the other hand, I have no idea what could have saved poor Martin of Aragon, who supposedly died in 1410 from a combination of indigestion and uncontrollable laughing. Martin apparently was suffering from indigestion after eating an entire goose when his favorite jester, Borra, entered the king’s bedroom. Martin asked Borra where he had been, and Borra replied, “Out of the next vineyard, where I saw a young deer hanging by his tail from a tree, as if someone had so punished him for stealing figs.” This joke caused the king to die from laughter.

I guess you had to be there.

For more information on unusual deaths in the Middle Ages, click here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_deaths#Middle_Ages

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09.26.22

by Todd Lebowitz

Seattle Trades Nirvana & Ken Griffey for Burdensome New Independent Contractor Law

Back in the 1990s, Seattle was known for Nirvana and Pearl Jam, Ken Griffey Jr., Microsoft, Frasier (which I could never get into), the emergence of Amazon, and a lot fewer homeless people. The fewer homeless people may have been in part to the Fremont Troll, an 18-foot sculpture erected in 1990 under the Aurora Bridge, where it holds a crushed VW Beetle and would be scary as hell to sleep next to.

The troll’s still there, but Griffey and Frasier are gone and we all know what happened to Nirvana.

Having left the 90s behind, Seattle in 2022 apparently wants to be known instead as a city where it is pretty burdensome to retain independent contractors.

The Seattle City Council passed a law that requires immediate action from all companies that have solo independent contractors working in the city. The Independent Contractor Protections Ordinance, codified at SMC 14.34, took effect Sept. 1.

The rest of this article was originally published as a BakerHostetler Alert, here. Immediate action is needed for companies with solo contractors in Seattle, so read on. All the same helpful info is just below.

The law applies to solo independent contractors who perform any part of their work in Seattle for a commercial hiring entity if the contractor receives or is expected to receive at least $600 in total compensation from the hiring entity during a calendar year. If the hiring party knows or has reason to know that the work is being performed in Seattle, then the law applies, even if the hiring party has no preference as to where the work is performed.

Independent contractors are defined to include individuals and entities consisting of only one person. The law does not apply to workers being treated as employees by a staffing agency or consulting firm.

Commercial hiring entities are defined to include for-profit and nonprofit organizations. Modified rules apply to drivers for transportation network companies, such as ride-share services. There are also exceptions for lawyers and for contractors whose sole relationship to the hiring party is a property rental agreement.

Commercial hiring entities with independent contractors covered under the new law must:

Provide a written precontract disclosure to the contractor that includes at least 12 specified categories of information about the engagement. This disclosure must be in a single document in the contractor’s primary language. A model notice is available.
Provide written updates before making changes to any of the required information.
Provide timely payment consistent with the precontract disclosure terms or a later written contract. If no deadline for payment is specified, then the contractor must be paid no later than 30 days after the work is completed.
Provide an itemized, written payment disclosure accompanying each payment. The disclosure must be in a single document, such as a pay stub or invoice, and it must contain information in at least 12 specified categories.
Provide a written notice of the contractor’s rights under the new law. The notice must be in English and, if applicable, the contractor’s primary language. A model notice is available.
Maintain for three years records that demonstrate compliance with these requirements.
Refrain from retaliating against any contractor who asserts rights protected under the new law. Prohibited retaliation includes threatening to report that the contractor is an illegal immigrant. If any adverse action is taken within 90 days of a contractor’s exercise of rights, the law creates a rebuttable presumption that the action was retaliatory.

The precontract disclosure and disclosure of rights must be provided before work begins or, for contractors already providing services, by Sept. 30, 2022.

Penalties for violating this law may include payment of unpaid compensation, liquidated damages, civil penalties, other penalties payable to an aggrieved contractor, fines and interest. These penalties are in addition to any other relief available under any other law.

BakerHostetler’s Contingent Workforce team continues to monitor state and local developments affecting companies that retain independent contractors. Please reach out to your BakerHostetler contact or any member of the Contingent Workforce team for compliance assistance.

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09.20.22

by Todd Lebowitz

Don’t Get Armboxed: Strict ABC Test Results in $100 Million Misclassification Liability

In Russia, a new variant on boxing involves chaining the two combatants to opposite sides of a podium, with one arm of each boxer immobilized. They then pound each other with the remaining good arm and, because they’re tied to the podium, they have nowhere to go.

The contests, called armboxing, last for three one minute rounds. If the fighters last two rounds, their arms are both freed up for round three, but the boxers remain chained to the podium.

Getting pummeled with nowhere to go is also a fair way to describe Uber’s most recent run-in with the New Jersey Department of Labor over unpaid unemployment contributions. The NJDOL claims that under the Strict ABC Test governing New Jersey unemployment law, rideshare drivers are employees, not independent contractors.

The NJDOL pursued Uber and a subsidiary for failing to pay into the state’s unemployment fund over a five-year period, 2014-2018.

Last week, the NJDOL announced a settlement with Uber to cover the unpaid assessments – for a cool $100 million. The amount was based on $78 million in unpaid contributions plus $22 million in interest. Uber has made the payment but did not concede there was any misclassification.

New Jersey uses a strict ABC Test to determine employee status for unemployment coverage, but uses a different version of the ABC Test for wage and hour law. The strict ABC Test used for unemployment law follows the same formula as the tests in Massachusetts and California. The danger in these tests, of course, lies in prong B, which requires that to be an independent contractor, the work being performed must be “outside the usual course” of the hiring party’s business.

State departments of labor are notoriously aggressive in pursuing misclassification, and courts often defer to their judgment, even if the facts could support independent contractor status. The NJDOL is among the most aggressive enforcers, as you might expect when its Labor Commissioner says this: “Let’s be clear: there is no reason temporary, or on-demand workers who work flexible hours, or even minutes at a time can’t be treated like other employees in New Jersey or any other state.”

For businesses using independent contractors, tools such as arbitration agreements with class action waivers can be effective in preventing class action litigation. But arbitration agreements can’t stop a state agency from conducting an audit and imposing its own penalties for noncompliance.

And that’s how Uber found itself tied to a podium with one arm immobilized as it got hit.

Businesses in states using strict ABC Tests need to be particularly careful when setting up their business plans, their contracts, and their external messaging. State audits can be random, or they can be initiated after a worker complaint.

Unemployment filings by independent contractors can be especially dangerous. State departments of labor will typically investigate those claims, assess whether the worker is misclassified and — most troubling of all — will find that if the one worker was misclassified, then all similarly situated workers were also misclassified. The state DOL may then issue back assessments based on its assumptions about how many workers are similarly situated and how many were therefore misclassified.

When an independent contractor files an unemployment claim, pay attention and be prepared to defend your classification decision. Merely denying that the worker was an employee may not be enough, and a full-fledged audit could follow. In a full-fledged audit, the stakes can be high, and it might not feel like a fair fight.

Be proactive, plan ahead, and don’t chain your business to a podium.

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09.13.22

by Todd Lebowitz

NLRB’s Proposed New Joint Employment Rule: Same But Different

[Reposting with revised link to the article, not behind paywall]

When I was 5 years old, and my sister was 3, the rule was that we had to be in our rooms by 8 p.m.

We followed that rule, but in our own way. We’d put on our pajamas, say good night and go into our rooms. But then we would lie down on the carpet at the very edge of our rooms, with our bodies still in the room and our heads in the hallway so we could talk.

In the strictest sense, we followed the rule. But we did it in our own way, to serve our own purposes. In essence, we chose to define what it means to be in our rooms.

The same sort of rulemaking is happening at the National Labor Relations Board on the subject of defining joint employment.

Click here to read the rest of this article, published 9/12/2022 in Law360.

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© 2022 Todd Lebowitz, posted on WhoIsMyEmployee.com, Exploring Issues of Independent Contractor Misclassification and Joint Employment. All rights reserved. This article originally published on Law360, 9/12/2022.

09.06.22

by Todd Lebowitz

Are Independent Contractors Entitled to Military Leave? Eggcellent question!

Worker protection laws are a bit different in China.

According to this report, a Chinese company forces its employees to eat raw eggs as punishment if their work does not meet expectations. When one intern complained, the HR Manager allegedly responded, “What law is preventing you from eating a raw egg?”

Even if the company’s motivational techniques could be challenged under Chinese labor law, Chinese legal experts caution that the intern is probably not the right person to complain. His unpaid internship apparently doesn’t make him an employee under Chinese law. And there it is: The age old question of Who Is My Employee? is a thing in China too.

Back in the U.S., we know that the employee vs. independent contractor question makes all the difference in whether several types of employment, tax, and benefits laws apply. But what about military leave law?

Under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA), employees are guaranteed reinstatement and other job protection rights after taking military leave. And employers must grant military leave when requested.

Do the same protections apply to independent contractors?

According to federal regulations, the answer is no — so long as the contractor is properly classified as a contractor.

Under USERRA, independent contractor status is evaluated using a Right to Control Test. The regulations say these six factors should be considered:

1. The extent of the employer’s right to control the manner in which the individual’s work is to be performed;

2. The opportunity for profit or loss that depends upon the individual’s managerial skill;

3. Any investment in equipment or materials required for the individual’s tasks, or his or her employment of helpers;

4. Whether the service the individual performs requires a special skill;

5. The permanence of the individual’s working relationship; and,

6. Whether the service the individual performs is an integral part of the employer’s business.

No single factor is controlling, but all are relevant for determining whether an individual is an employee or an independent contractor.

As with so many other laws, it’s not enough just to assume USERRA doesn’t apply because a worker is classified as an independent contractor. The workers has to be properly classified as an independent contractor, according to the test that applies to that particular law.

Getting it wrong means failure to comply with military leave law. That sounds unpatriotic and unfair. And it could leave you with egg on your face.

[Note to self for future blog post idea: Can you require independent contractors to eat raw eggs in the U.S.?]

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08.29.22

by Todd Lebowitz

How to Support Prong C of the ABC Test, and Why You Can’t Lie Down When Faced with an Audit

*Zippy practices for the 13th Annual Lying Down Championships*

Lying down in the face of a challenge is rarely a good strategy. I did, however, find one exception.

A man from Montenegro recently won the 12th Annual Lying Down Championships, beating out nine other competitors by remaining horizontal under a tree for 60 hours. As a reward for his (lack of) effort, he received 350 euros, lunch for two at a restaurant, a weekend stay at a local village, and a rafting trip.

Then things got weird. Local media reported that shortly after the competition, the winner was taken into police custody for (allegedly) physically attacking journalists and damaging the headquarters of a newspaper that called him “the biggest swindler in all of Montenegro.”

I suppose there’s a lesson in here somewhere: Offer a man an award and he’ll lie still for 60 hours, but call him a swindler and he won’t take that lying down.

But I digress. In this post, I want to share some tips gleaned from a recent New Jersey Supreme Court case involving prong C of the ABC Test. The case also serves as a reminder never to take a misclassification audit lying down.

The dispute involved East Bay, a drywall installation company that used independent contractor drywall installers for residential jobs. Until 2013, the company treated its installers as employees. It then switched to an independent contractor model. Risky move. This sparked an audit.

The New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development wanted to know why this company, which was still active, suddenly lacked employees. The audit looked at the individuals who continued to install drywall and examined whether, under New Jersey’s ABC Test, they were independent contractors or employees.

You can guess what happened next. The Department found that 16 installers were misclassified, and it issued a hefty back assessment against the company for failing to pay into the state unemployment fund. The company appealed and lost.

The New Jersey Supreme Court’s opinion focused largely on what it takes to prove prong C of the ABC Test — that the individual “is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, profession, or business.” (You can read more about New Jersey’s ABC Test here, but otherwise I am going to assume that readers are familiar with the basic concept of the ABC Test.)

The drywall company put forth evidence that the independent contractors had registered business entities and certificates of insurance. The New Jersey Supreme Court held that wasn’t enough to satisfy prong C. This evidence wasn’t enough to prove that the individuals truly operated independently. Evidence in support of prong C should demonstrate that the independent contractor would not become unemployed if the work from this company went away.

The Court gave some examples of evidence that would have been more persuasive in satisfying prong C, including:

That the IC’s business will continue when this engagement ends;
That the IC’s business is stable and lasting, or other evidence of longevity;
That the IC has other customers;
That the IC has other sources of revenue, and the company being audited is not the primary source of income for the IC;
That the IC provides the tools, equipment, vehicles, and other resources needed to perform the work;
That the IC has telephone listings or business stationery;
That the IC advertises;
That the IC has its own employees;
That the IC maintains inventory;
That the IC bears the risk of loss;
That the IC benefits from the goodwill generated from a job well done;
That the IC is required to maintain educational and licensure requirements;
That the IC is permitted to obtain work from other businesses; and
That the IC in fact performs work for other businesses.

The court cited these as examples of the types of evidence that would have been helpful to prove prong C. This is not a mandatory list. The point here was just that business registrations and certificates of insurance were not enough. Strategically, there is other evidence that would be helpful too, and there are steps that can be taken when retaining ICs to help build a defense. I maintain a longer list but, hey, I can’t give away all the secrets here.

Other observations from the New Jersey Supreme Court decision:

1. How to invite an audit. Switching from an employee model to an independent contractor model is, by itself, enough to prompt an audit.

2. An ominous footnote about prong B. There was also a dispute in this case over the meaning of prong B. Remember, New Jersey has a standard ABC Test, which allows prong B to be satisfied by showing either the work is outside the hiring party’s usual course of business or the work is performed outside of the places of business of the hiring party. (This is different than the California version of the ABC Test.) All drywall installation work was performed at customers’ residences. After the audit, the Commissioner of Labor found (inexplicably) that prong B was not satisfied. It is unclear from the opinion whether that was based on a conclusion that the customers’ residences were East Bay’s places of business or was based on some other fact, such as some kind of work being done at East Bay’s place of business. If the Commissioner believed customer’s residences to be East Bay’s places of business, then it is hard to see how the latter part of prong B could ever be satisfied. But the NJ Supreme Court did not consider prong B in its decision. The Court ruled that prong C was not satisfied, and so it chose not to wade into the morass of prong B.

But there is an ominous footnote. When the Court declined to consider prong B, it noted that in its prior decisions, the place of business meant locations where the hiring party had a “physical plant or conducts an integral part of its business.” That’s consistent with common sense and would exclude a customer’s residence. The Court then, however, invited the Department of Labor to issue regulations explaining how the Department thinks prong B should be interpreted. Yikes!

3. You need to fight unemployment claims by ICs at the initial audit level; you can’t expect a court to save you on appeal. Courts will defer to the findings of an agency if its factual findings have any support in the record, no matter how flimsy. In other words, the agency can be wrong in its overall weighing of the factors, but a court is supposed to affirm the agency’s decision if there’s evidence to support it. Not “a preponderance of evidence” or “ample evidence” or even “sufficient evidence.” Just “evidence.” Folks, the reason we have trials is because there’s almost always at least some evidence on both sides, even if the preponderance of the evidence leans the other way. You shouldn’t have to pitch a shutout to win the game.

I have seen the same deference standard applied to unemployment decisions in New York and Ohio. The courts defer to the agencies. It is unfair. The result can be that the agency’s decision gets affirmed, even if it made the objectively wrong decision.

This unfair standard highlights how important it is to win at the earliest stages in an unemployment claim, if independent contractor status is being challenged. The initial investigation is your best chance to defend independent contractor status. If you wait, it’s too late. Provide the auditor your best evidence on every factor, and don’t hold back.

Remember the consequences too. If one contractor is misclassified, the agency will likely deem all other similarly situated contractors to be misclassified, and you’ll be on the hook for unpaid assessments for all of them. The stakes are high. Companies using independent contractors should spend the time and money to mount a full defense of their contractor’s status at the audit stage. It’s worth the investment, especially because the state courts will generally defer to the agency’s findings, even if the agency is wrong.

Here’s the ultimate takeaway: If you’ve entered a Lying Down Competition, it’s ok to lie down for as long as you want. But if you’re faced with a worker classification audit, or a 1099 audit, or an unemployment claim by a former independent contractor, do not take that lying down.

You need to fight hard in the audit, producing evidence to support independent contractor status. You’ll have the right to appeal if you lose, but don’t expect a fair chance to prove your case. You’ve got to do your best to win any classification dispute at the initial audit. That’s the time to retain counsel and invest time and resources. If you lose the audit and bring an appeal, you’re fighting a steep uphill climb.

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