Posts tagged Department of Labor
Ontario Trucking Employee Who Revealed Union Boss Salaries Hits Teamsters Union with Federal Charge After Job Threats
February 6, 2024 // “We will not be deterred by their bullying tactics and the baseless accusations they levy against myself and others. I hope that the actions of the officials from Teamsters Local 63 serve as a clear example to my colleagues that the union cannot dispute the facts of their incompetence in representing us, so they must resort to intimidation and slanderous accusations. We will remain steadfast in our pursuit of a better future for ourselves and our families.”
Biden’s war on work undermines the American dream
February 6, 2024 // Biden’s Labor Department rule pursues the same goals as AB 5 and would put the monthly incomes of tens of millions of people — disproportionately women (especially mothers) and minorities — at risk.
The Department of Labor Returns to the Totality-of-the-Circumstances Test for Worker Classification
February 6, 2024 // Employers in states with stricter rules must meet whichever standard provides the greatest protection for workers. Regardless of the analysis applied, remember that workers cannot “waive” their status as an employee and voluntarily elect to be an independent contractor. Highly Regulated Industries Take Note The Final Rule purports to address the concerns that compliance with “legal obligations, safety or health standards, or requirements to meet contractual or quality control obligations may indicate control[.]” The DOL sought to address this concern by stating “actions taken by the potential employer for the sole purpose of complying with a specific, applicable Federal, State, Tribal, or local law or regulation are not indicative of control.” However, the DOL makes clear that anything going “beyond compliance” with these laws or regulations potentially indicates control—a distinction likely to be litigated in misclassification disputes. Bottom Line: Franchisors Must be Cautious of the Restrictions and Controls it Places Over Franchisees.
OPINION: Biden’s war on working women
February 5, 2024 // But given the administration’s bent toward categorizing workers as employees (in an effort to ramp up unionization), the prospects of retaining their independent status look bleak for the nation’s 70+ million independent workers. Over half of freelancers are women. They earn full-time, part-time, or occasional incomes through various occupations that include—but are not limited to—the gig economy. Think about virtual assistants, marketing professionals, transcriptionists, makeup artists, entertainers, and medical assistants. SEE ALSO Goodbye, wage gap. Hello, partner gap. As true take-home-pay equality looms, psychologists warn it could interfere with women’s evolutionary drive to seek out a partner who provides. Women ultimately may pay the price for finally earning as much as men They depend on flexibility to work around their priorities, such as raising families, caring for aging parents and sick spouses, or managing their own illnesses and disabilities.
Let’s Address the Real Challenges for Independent Contractors and Gig Workers
February 5, 2024 // Self-employment fell by 10.5 percent on average for non-exempt occupations, while overall employment fell by 4.4 percent on average for non-exempt occupations Occupations with a greater prevalence of self-employed workers saw greater reductions in both self-employment and overall employment In other words, on average, 1 in 10 self-employed individuals may have lost self-employment opportunities in California among occupations not exempt from AB5, while there is no evidence of an accompanying increase in traditional employment opportunities among workers in non-exempt occupations.
Biden Takes a Destructive California Idea National
February 4, 2024 // The Biden administration appears undeterred by the lessons of recent history. The California law unleashed chaos in the state’s politics and courts. Politicians delegated to union leaders the power to hand out exemptions to politically favored groups. Lawyers, doctors, psychologists, dentists, podiatrists — almost anybody with an advanced degree was exempt. When newspapers editorialized against the new law — noting that they rely on freelance photographers, reporters, editors, designers, and delivery people — they, too, were excluded from the new regulations. Suddenly free from the dead hand of state regulators, the newspapers turned as one and editorialized in favor of the new law. A federal judge said the process was shot through with “corruption,” “backroom dealing,” “pure spite,” and “naked favoritism.” But more important, A.B. 5 crushed tens of thousands of California business owners — those who operate as independent contractors as well as those who employ or otherwise rely on them. Now Biden and Su plan to bring the crazy to every American state.
OP-ED: Labor Department’s new independent contractor rule is a mess. We need a clear national standard instead.
February 2, 2024 // This confusion has serious consequences. Worker classification affects not only minimum wages and overtime, but also fringe benefits, taxes, insurance, liability for injuries, and union organizing. It can even implicate antitrust law. So if a business classifies a worker incorrectly, it can face serious legal penalties. And those penalties aren’t just monetary: some states have even made misclassification a crime. And make no mistake, this isn’t only a problem for companies; it’s a problem for workers too. Look no further than what has happened in California. In 2020, the state changed its classification rules to crack down on supposed misclassification. The state’s goal was to shift workers out of independent contracting and into employment. But not only did contracting dry up, so did employment. A new study shows that more than ten percent of contractors and four percent of employees in the affected professions simply lost their jobs. Businesses were so afraid of the new classification rules that they cut opportunities across the board.
The Year of the Union…Corruption?
February 1, 2024 // According to an annual report by the Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS), over 155 criminal investigations into union-related activity were completed over the past year. As a result, the OLMS distributed 39 indictments and collected 57 convictions for numerous offenses ranging from petty theft to labor racketeering. While these findings are certainly disturbing, they likely only represent a drop in the bucket of national union corruption. This is because, according to the Department of Labor, it is simply “not feasible” to audit every union. Instead, forced to optimize limited resources against widespread corruption, the OLMS has developed an auditing methodology for unions whose “metrics suggest the possibility that there may have been criminal activity.” In 2023, the OLMS conducted 222 of these targeted audits, ultimately finding that 18.3% of these cases warranted criminal action. With nearly 1/5 of audits uncovering some form of wrongdoing, even in the limited sampling size permitted by OLMS resources, it is fair to say that corruption is entrenched within the American labor movement.
‘Independent Contractor’ Rule Latest Dumpster Fire Exported From California
January 31, 2024 // One of those infamous policies and the havoc it’s bound to wreak has gone national, thanks to labor department rules issued by the Biden administration. A 339-page Department of Labor rule – you can always count on the federal government to keep it pithy – would make it much harder to be an independent contractor or freelance worker in America. Created to replace a simpler Trump-era rule, it’s modeled on AB5, a disastrous 2019 California law that made independent contracting and freelance work so hard to do that it effectively outlawed it in the Golden State.
Rachel Greszler: 64 million Americans risk losing work under Biden administration rule
January 30, 2024 // The group Freelancers Against AB 5 compiled a list of more than 600 professions that have been negatively affected by independent contracting restrictions, and Americans for Tax Reform documents more than 600 personal testimonials of workers who’ve been harmed. Karen Anderson, the founder of Freelancers Against AB5, testified to federal lawmakers about children’s theaters and nonprofit youth sports clubs closing their doors; sign language interpreters unable to provide ADA-mandated services to the deaf; and professionals having to move out of state to maintain their livelihoods.