I have been worried for some time now about the threat of increasing cooperation between agencies, federal and state, when it comes to assessing independent contractor status. Well, my fear has reached a new level of concern by the announcement that two federal agencies will be collaborating to analyze businesses and their relationships with alleged independent contractors. They will be focusing on, among other things, antitrust issues. The agencies are the National Relations Board (NLRB) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
In a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), the agencies advised they will share information and engage in inter-agency consulting, as well as providing training and education to the employer community. This is much like the MOU that the NLRB and the DOL Wage-Hour Division entered into this year. The NLRB is now taking an almost leading position to work hand in with these other federal agencies to facilitate “fair competition” and the advancement of worker rights, which is another way, in my view, of facilitating union organizing.
It appears that the focus of the MOU and agency efforts will be the so-called “gig economy” and the enormous number of independent contractors that populate these businesses. There is an alleged largescale misclassification of workers in this industry and this hampers the ability of workers to organize or become unionized, as “true” independent contractors are not employees under the National Labor Relation Act (or the Fair...
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