A chess-playing robot took enforcement a bit too seriously at a recent tournament in Moscow. Facing a 9-year old human opponent, the robot grabbed and broke the boy’s index finger when the boy reached toward the board when it was the robot’s turn to move. When you’re a robot, rules are rules.
The robot had been in use for 15 years (and the boy had been in use only 9). Neither robot nor boy had any known history of delinquency, but this sounds like a textbook case of bullying. And there’s video!
In an unrelated matter, New York Governor Kathy Hochul was not going to be bullied by the state legislature into signing a recently passed bill that would have imposed new requirements on the use of individual independent contractors.
Hochul vetoed the proposed Freelance Isn’t Free Act on the grounds that it imposed inappropriate burdens on the NY State Department of Labor. In her veto statement, she wrote that the state DOL “could not implement the legislation effectively” because it required the DOL to oversee private contracts between businesses and non-employees. That’s well outside the DOL’s mission of enforcing labor protections for employees.
The law would have required written contracts with individual freelancers, with various types of mandatory disclosures in each contract.
The proposed law was a statewide version of New York City’s Freelance Isn’t Free Act, which NYC enacted in 2016. A summary of the NYC law is here. In 2017, the NYC Department of Consumer Affairs published an additional set of rules implementing the act and adding new restrictions that were not in the original law.
Because the 2022 legislative session has ended, the NY state assembly cannot override her veto, but the bill could be reintroduced in 2023.
If the assembly wants to try again, it might try another version that does not involve the DOL, since this is not a misclassification bill and is not a matter between employers and employees. For the bill to be effective, it would need a suitable yet aggressive enforcer of the new rules.
I know of a chess-playing robot in Moscow that might be available.
If you google “what to watch for 2023,” you’ll mostly get tips on soon-to-be-released movies and streaming video shows. You’ll get grammatically impossible generic hype like “movies we can’t wait to see” (except the whole point is that you have to wait to see them) and you’ll get grammatically impossible niche hype like “The most anticipated Korean dramas and movies we can’t wait to watch in 2023.”
We won’t peddle hype in this post, and you’ll literally have to wait for all of the things addressed below. But here are five important developments to watch for in 2023.
1. The test for Independent Contractor vs. Employee is likely to change, at least under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The Department of Labor proposed a new multi-factor test, and the period for public comment ended December 13. The DOL is likely to roll out a new test in 2023. It will replace the current core factors test described here.
2. The test for Joint Employment is likely to change, at least under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). In September, the NLRB proposed a new test for determining when joint employment exists under the NLRA. You can read more here. The public comment period has closed, and we can expect a new test sometime in 2023.
3. The NLRB is likely to rule that independent contractor misclassification, by itself, is an unfair labor practice. The NLRB General Counsel has expressed an intent to reverse the Velox Express decision from 2019, in which the Board ruled that misclassification was not an automatic ULP. More information is here. Now that the Board majority has switched from Republican to Democrat, expect a decision in 2023 that creates an automatic ULP when there’s a finding of worker misclassification.
4. Expect state legislatures to keep changing the tests for Independent Contractor vs. Employee. Some states will try to make it harder to maintain independent contractor status by passing ABC Tests, in either a standard or strict version. A few conservative states may go the other way and adopt the latest version of the Uniform Worker Classification Act proposed by ALEC. The law would create a safe harbor for independent contractor classification if certain requirements are followed, including having a written contract. Versions of this law have been passed in West Virginia and Louisiana. You can read more here. Expect Oklahoma to be next.
5. Expect significant rulings on California independent contractor law. Several important cases are pending. These include Olson v. State of California, which challenges the constitutionality of AB 5. Oral argument was held in the Ninth Circuit in July 2022. In another case, the California Court of Appeal is considering the legality of Prop 22, the successful ballot measure that helped to protect independent contractor status for rideshare and delivery drivers using app services. Oral argument in that case, Castellanos v. State of California, was held in December 2022.
The law regarding contingent workforce is constantly changing, and 2023 looks to be another year of significant transformation. As always, it will be a good idea to watch these new developments carefully, as they will likely have a significant impact on companies using independent contractors and other contingent workforce arrangements.
Christian Encarnacion-Strand presents an unusual problem for the Cincinnati Reds. His name is too long to fit horizontally across the back of his uniform. The Reds are taking an upside-down-horseshoe approach to this problem, and if this minor league third baseman makes the big league club this year, his 18-character surname (with hyphen) would win the award (there’s no award) for most characters in a major league surname.
The current honor lies with Simeon Woods Richardson, a pitcher for the Twins, whose unhyphenated surname stretches 16 characters (including the space). The Twins applied more of a 3/4 circle strategy, which I think is less visually appealing than the Reds’ approach.
When it comes to horizontal challenges, placing letters on a uniform falls in the category of very low risk. The twitter community may have strong opinions, but there’s no real implication to either approach.
But when it comes to horizontal relationships among companies competing for talent, it’s much more important to get things right. No poaching agreements can lead to criminal charges — as we can see from a case making its way through the federal district court in Connecticut.
In the pending case, Company A outsourced engineering projects to companies B through F, all of whom compete for engineering talent. Companies B through F also compete with each other for projects from Company A.
Between 2011 and 2019, Companies A through F allegedly agreed to restrict the hiring and recruiting of engineers and other skilled-labor employees between them. All of the companies allegedly agreed to (1) not hire employees of Companies B through F and (2) not proactively contact, interview, and recruit applicants who were employed by another one of the companies. Company A allegedly policed and enforced the agreement.
This arrangement led to a criminal indictment, charging that these no-poaching agreements were a conspiracy in restrain of trade, in violation of the Sherman Act. The indictment alleges that the companies engaged in illegal market allocation, which suppressed competition for talent and wages.
The defendants filed a motion to dismiss the indictment. Because this issue potentially affects staffing and franchise relationships, the American Staffing Association, the Society for Human Resource Management, and others filed amicus briefs in support of the motion to dismiss.
On December 2, 2022, the district court denied the motion to dismiss. The opinion evaluates the arguments on both sides and considers how this arrangement compares to others where no-poach agreements have been held to be permitted. For example, the court considered whether the agreed-upon restraint was “ancillary to a legitimate business collaboration.” If yes, that could support an exception to the legal prohibition on restraints of trade. But the court ruled that the relationship here was competitive, not collaborative, because Companies B through F were competing for outsourcing work from Company A.
From a procedural standpoint, this decision does not make any findings about whether the arrangement actually did violate the law. This ruling is just the denial of a motion to dismiss, which means the case can move forward.
But the opinion should provide a wake up call to the staffing industry, the franchise industry, and other organizations where a small identifiable number of companies are competing for talent and for engagements.
The federal government has made it a priority to minimize restraints of trade and has shown a willingness to issue criminal indictments against companies (and individuals) who enter into unlawful agreements that restrict labor mobility.
That is not to say that all no-poach agreements are unlawful. In many situations they are appropriate. But companies in horizontal competition with each other need to tread very carefully, and any no-poach agreement among horizontal competitors may create significant legal problems, including potential criminal liability.
For baseball uniforms, horizontal challenges can be addressed with the upside-down horseshoe or 3/4 circle strategy (preferably the former!). But these simple solutions are not available in the business world, where companies compete for talent and engagements. As of now, there is no upside-down horseshoe exception to the Sherman Act.
If you have a beard at least 8 inches long, here’s an opportunity you might not have considered. At a bar in Casper, Wyoming, a group of bewhiskered patrons tied their beards together to take the world’s record for Longest Beard Chain.
How long? 150 feet, shattering the previous record of 62 feet, set by a shaggy German crew in 2007.
But that wasn’t even the hairiest highlight of the weekend. Down the street was the National Beard and Moustache Championships, a visual delight featuring moustache categories such as best handlebar, Dali, freestyle, and uber-stache, and partial beard categories including best friendly sideburns, goatee freestyle, musketeer, and Fu Manchu.
Meanwhile, 1,000 miles to the west, a different sort of hairy situation was nearing conclusion for several operators of gentleman’s clubs or nightclubs or strip joints, depending on your preferred terminology.
Last week, a federal district court in San Francisco approved a settlement that combined multiple class action claims of independent contractor misclassification brought by exotic dancers. The settlement covered more than 8,000 dancers and included a total payout of $6.5 million.
The cases were complicated by a number of legal issues, including the fact that — because of the timing of the lawsuit — the question of whether the dancers were contractors or employees was to be determined using different tests for different claims. The dancers’ classification for their California wage order claims would be determined using an ABC Test, but their classification under other Labor Code claims would be determined using the Borello balancing test, which is a California hybrid of Right to Control and Economic Realities Tests.
The class period covered 2010 through 2018, so the Dynamex decision applied to the wage claims, but AB5 had not yet been enacted, which left the Borello test to govern the Labor Code claims. This post explains the complicated situation that existed at the time. Had the class covered the period from January 2020 forward, the ABC Test likely would have been used to determine classification under all of the California claims.
But there were also Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) claims. The FLSA uses an Economic Realities Test to determine a worker’s classification, but that test is fluid too. The Economic Realities Test used by most courts is different from the test that was written into the current FLSA regulations in 2020, which is different from the test the DOL recently proposed to enact in a new set of regulations currently under consideration.
So for these class members, there were at least three different tests that would determine whether they were employees or independent contractors under different laws. That’s kind of like trying to determine who had the best musketeer or Fu Manchu but with everyone’s facial hair tied together in a 150-foot beard chain.
There are a few takeaways here for the rest of us.
First, misclassification claims by exotic dancers remain common. The business model needs some internal review. But that’s probably not your concern.
Second, the settlement is a good reminder of how complicated it can be to determine a worker’s classification when multiple laws apply. Different tests apply to different laws, even within the same state. The dancers, had they gone to trial, might have been employees under some laws and contractors under other laws.
Third, there are significant costs in reclassifying contractors to employees. The settlement required the clubs to reclassify their dancers to employees, which means the dancers would become eligible for unemployment, workers’ comp coverage, and protection under the anti-discrimination and leave laws that apply to employees.
Regardless of your business, it’s always a good idea to proactively review independent contractor relationships to see how well they would withstand a classification challenge in court. Misclassification cases are high stakes and can take many twists and turns. Sort of like the facial hair in the Full Beard Freestyle category. (Photos here.)
This gem recently popped up on my twitter feed. Causes of death in London, 1632. Seems to me that cancer would be bad enough, but 10 deaths were attributable to the deadly combination of “cancer and wolf.” Sounds to me like 17th century cancer wards needed a moat.
Other notable causes of death include “Consumption” (1797) and its equally deadly opposite, “Dead in the street and starved” (6). “King’s evil” fell 38 unappreciated subjects of the Crown, and 98 died from “Rising of the lights,” which is a fate perhaps narrowly avoided by Clark in Christmas Vacation.
There were lots of things in 1630s London that could bring a person down, but happily “joint employment” is not among the recorded causes of death. Which raises this question as we head into 2023:
Can individuals be liable as joint employers?
The answer, of course, is sometimes.
The Supreme Court of Virginia recently ruled that individuals could not be joint employers under that state’s law on unpaid wages. The decision, was based on a strict reading of a state statute, which permitted only “entities” to be joint employers. The Virginia court explained that this definition was narrower than the understood meaning of joint employer under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
And, indeed, the FLSA does recognize that individuals may be joint employers. This nugget from the First Circuit Court of Appeals answers that question with little room for doubt: “The overwhelming weight of authority is that a corporate officer with operational control of a corporation’s covered enterprise is an employer along with the corporation, jointly and severally liable under the FLSA for unpaid wages.”Donovan v. Agnew, 712 F.2d 1509, 1511 (1st Cir.1983).
The difference is definitional. The FLSA looks to whether one or more “persons” is the employer. Persons can be individuals or entities. The Virginia statute considered only “entities.”
Individual corporate officers can, therefore, face liability as joint employers, particularly in smaller organizations where corporate formalities might not be followed as closely as they should be. For example, in the Agnew case, the court determined that “corporate officers with a significant ownership interest who had operational control of significant aspects of the corporation’s day to day functions, including compensation of employees, and who personally made decisions to continue operations despite financial adversity during the period of non-payment” were employers under the FLSA.
The bottom line here is that, yes, individuals can — at least under some circumstances — be joint employers under the FLSA. But not necessarily under every state’s law.
So that’s one more thing that individuals need to be wary of, in addition to the king’s evil and the dreaded combination of “cancer and wolf.”
In Inner Mongolia, these sheep have been walking in a circle for about two weeks, with a few sheep occasionally standing in the middle. Here’s video.
Various theories have been circulating to try to explain the odd behavior, including that it may be some sort of bacteria-induced delirium.
But I think I know the real reason. (And a hearty Mazel Tov! to the wooly couple!)
When drafting independent contractor agreements, it’s never a good idea to be unsure of why you’re doing something. Too often, businesses use generic agreements and don’t understand the impact or purpose of what they’ve written.
One common place I see mistakes is in the very beginning of contracts – the contractual recitals.
Recitals are often used to provide context for the reader. Recitals are also used for six-year old piano players to play chopsticks for grandma, but that’s for another day. For example, an off-the-shelf independent contractor agreement might start with something like this: We’re in the business of doing X, and we are retaining Contractor to do this part of X. Therefore, the parties agree to the following terms.
The problem with that innocent sounding recital is that it may be evidence the contractor is misclassified.
Under a Strict ABC Test, if the work being performed by the contractor is within the hiring party’s usual course of business, the contractor is automatically considered an employee. That fact fails prong B of a strict ABC Test.
Under an Economic Realities Test or a Right to Control Test, one of the factors often considered is often whether the work being performed is “an integral part” of the business, or some variation on that theme. Unlike ABC Tests, these tests are balancing tests and so one factor will not necessarily determine a worker’s classification, but there’s no reason to give the factor away, especially in a contract recital.
In a misclassification challenge, every fact and contract term will be subject to scrutiny.
If you’re unsure whether the term is needed, then question whether to include it. Recitals generally aren’t needed at all, and I often omit them from my independent contractor agreements. Don’t include off-the-shelf terms if you don’t understand their effect.
Unexplainable behavior makes for good blog posts and tweets, but not good contracts.
Which is why I never ask unfamiliar sheep to help me draft contracts.
If I ask you to name a song by Rick Springfield, you’ll say “Jessie’s Girl.” If I ask you to name another, you’ll look at me with a blank stare. But there’s another song you probably know. I forgot all about it too until I heard it on the 80s channel last week.
“Don’t Talk to Strangers” was released in 1982 and, around May of that year, spent four weeks at #2 on the Billboard charts. (Bonus Trivia Question: Can you name the #1 song in May 1982? The answer is below.)
Springfield had a couple of other hits too. Remember “Love Somebody” and “I’ve Done Everything for You”? Good times.
Anyway, the State of California and County of Los Angeles are hardly strangers, and they not only talk, but they collaborate on social services programs. That collaboration led to a lawsuit raising joint employer questions under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
The State of California and the County of Los Angeles administer an In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS) program, which allows low-income elderly, blind, or disabled residents of the county to hire a provider to help them with daily living activities. The State of California runs the program at a state level, through state regulations, but the counties play a role in administering the program too.
Under a 2013 DOL regulation covering domestic workers, these workers were entitled to overtime pay under the FLSA. Until late 2015, however, the regulation was vacated while a court reviewed it. The state began paying overtime in 2016.
In this lawsuit, one of the IHSS providers filed suit against Los Angeles County, seeking FLSA overtime wages for 2015, while the rule was vacated and under review.
The county responded that the state, not the county, was the employer; and therefore the county could not be liable for the state’s failure to pay overtime in 2015. The district court agreed and ruled that the state, not the county, was the employer. The county would not be liable for the unpaid overtime. Or so it thought.
In a recent decision, however, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that conclusion. Applying the FLSA joint employer test, the Court held that the county was a joint employer, even though it did not control payroll.
Seems a little unfair, but that’s how joint employment works.
According to the Ninth Circuit, here’s the joint employer test under the FLSA: To determine whether an entity is a joint employer, the court must consider “whether the alleged employer (1) had the power to hire and fire the employees, (2) supervised and controlled employee work schedules or conditions of employment, (3) determined the rate and method of payment, and (4) maintained employment records.”
The test derives from a Ninth Circuit case called Bonette. Other circuits use slightly different tests.
Even though the state controls payroll, the Ninth Circuit ruled that the county had enough involvement, based on the four factors, to make it a joint employer. The county therefore would be jointly liable for the shortfall in overtime pay.
The case is a good reminder of the dangers of joint employment. Even if your business has no control over payroll, a joint employer is liable for the failure to pay overtime.
The idea of two different things coming together is also the answer to today’s trivia question from above: What was the #1 song on the Billboard charts in May 1982?
The world’s dirtiest man died last month at the (ripe) age of 94, having reportedly going 60 years without bathing. Covered in soot and living in a cinder-block shack, the Iranian hermit was known for eating roadkill, smoking a pipe filled with animal excrement, and believing that cleanliness would make him ill.
The newest dirtiest man alive may be this guy in India, who as of 2009 hadn’t bathed in a mere 35 years. Instead of water, this man of the people opts for a “fire bath,” in which he lights a bonfire, smokes marijuna and stands on a leg praying to Lord Shiva. The man told a reporter from the Hindustan Times, “Fire bath helps kill all the germs and infections in the body.” Of course it does.
Sometimes when we settle lawsuits, we also feel dirty. Maybe not that dirty, but at least icky. It feels wrong to pay money to a plaintiff when we feel the other party doesn’t deserve it. But settlements are often driven by factors other than the merits of a claim, such as business conditions or considerations other than purely financial.
In independent contractor misclassification cases, a settlement is sometimes the only way to ensure that a lawsuit does not result in forced reclassification of workers. In a settlement, the parties can agree upon terms, including financial payments, without conceding that anyone was misclassified and without requiring a reclassification going forward.
That is what happened in a recent case involving A Place for Rover, which is an app-based gig economy company that connects dog walkers with dog owners.
In May 2021, the app company won summary judgment in a misclassification dispute. The company argued that dog walkers were independent contractors, not employees, even under California law. The company argued that it could satisfy each prong of the ABC Test and that, regardless, it was a referral service under California law, which would exempt it from the ABC Test usually used in California to determine whether a worker is an employee. The company urged the court instead to analyze the classification dispute using the S.G. Borello balancing test, not an ABC Test.
The district court did not reach a conclusion on whether the company was a referral service and instead determined that the ABC Test was satisfied. The court ruled that dog walkers controlled their own work, routes, and prices, making them legitimate independent contractors.
But the plaintiff appealed, and the company may have feared that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals would revive the case and send it to trial. Instead of taking a chance on a bad outcome, the company settled.
By settling, the company pays money to avoid the risk of a judgment that the dog walkers were employees, an outcome that would likely render the company’s business model no longer viable. The company’s decision makers probably felt a little dirty, paying any money at all after having won at the district court level. That is not a surprising outcome, even if they felt strongly about their case. Because the stakes are so high in misclassification litigation, that’s often how these cases conclude. Icky but sometimes necessary.
But at least in litigation, afterwards you can take a bath.
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?
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.
Who Is My Employee? 