In this country, the rights you get as a worker—like overtime pay, a safe workplace, and the right to organize into a union—depend on a seemingly simple question: Are you an employee? If the answer is yes, you get a plateful of rights and protections under federal and state law. If the answer is no—meaning you’re an independent contractor in business for yourself—the plate is empty.
When employers misclassify their employees as independent contractors, and avoid providing the rights and protections various labor laws require, individual workers get hurt. Taxpayers suffer too, with billions in revenue lost from programs like workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance.
So how do we know who’s an employee and who isn’t? The bad news is that the answer can vary from one law to another.
The good news is that, at least with one important law, we have a lot more clarity on how to answer the question. On January 10, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued a long-awaited regulation that addresses how to properly classify a worker under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The FLSA, passed by Congress in 1938, set basic labor standards for employees—like a federal minimum wage and overtime pay. Its definition of who qualifies as an employee is broad.
DOL’s new rule focuses on whether, as a matter of “economic reality,” a worker is economically dependent on an employer for work (hence, an employee), or is in business for themself (thus, an independent contractor). It makes...
A video shows the Green Party celebrating an election win in a foreign language. False. This video was posted before the election. It is a Bengali language campaign video posted by the Green Party ...