Posts tagged Fair Labor Standards Act
Independent Work Offers Hope for Financial Security for Women 50+
March 5, 2024 // “I have friends who are struggling in retirement because they lost good jobs at age 50 and could never find another career position despite years of job searching.” A 2017 field study bears this out. Conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the study revealed a 47% lower callback rate for older female applicants than young female applicants aged 29 to 31 years. For sales jobs, the callback rate was 36% lower for older female applicants. Because independent contracting is vital to keeping pre-retirement women attached to the workforce, it defies logic that legislators insist on stifling the very independent career opportunities that help these women supplement their income, stay active, and maintain a sense of purpose.
How Dartmouth College’s unionization case could impact athletes at University of Arizona, ASU
February 28, 2024 // In the event Sacks’ ruling is upheld and Dartmouth men’s basketball players are allowed to unionize, the players could collectively bargain for a number of issues. “They could organize, they could form their unions, they could strike if they don’t like working conditions,” said Aaron Hernandez, assistant dean and executive director of Allan “Bud” Selig sports law and business program. “They could collectively bargain if the university is earning a check based off of some TV deal, as part of the greater conference.
Commentary: New Research Exposes Flaws in California’s Independent Contractor Law
February 28, 2024 // The theory behind both AB-5 and the DOL’s recently finalized regulation for classifying independent contractors or employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act is the same: by making it harder to maintain independent contractor relationships, independent contractors will be converted into traditional employees. The Mercatus study suggests this theory has failed in California. The question is whether DOL has learned anything from that example.
How the New Independent Contractor Rule Could Impact the Senior Care Gig Economy
February 27, 2024 // einer notes that the rule’s implementation follows a general movement throughout the country that is making it much harder for employers or businesses to classify workers as independent contractors. “However, since it’s a rule and not a statute, courts don’t necessarily have to follow it,” he says, although federal courts are inclined to follow guidance and rules issued by USDOL. “When the USDOL conducts an audit, they’re going to follow their own rules and guidance,” Weiner says. “Once you’re under an investigation by USDOL, you’re under their control. But because this rule has yet to go into effect, we don’t know necessarily what the overall real-world implications are.”
A Lawsuit Seeks to Stop the National Destruction of Trucking Through the DOL Indep. Contractor Rule
February 14, 2024 // The U.S. DOL is using bureaucratic means to make an end-run around already failed legislation (see The PRO Act) in order to destroy independent professionals and small businesses across the nation. The Rule embeds the same tenets found in the ABC Test, which supports AB5, and we all know how well that went in California. The state's trucking industry, in particular, continues to fight hard against AB5, and their battle is being watched by the rest of the industry in other states. Now, a Louisiana business has filed a lawsuit to stop the rule, which is scheduled to take effect on March 11.
Collateral Damage in the War on ‘Gig Work’
February 12, 2024 // A new Department of Labor rule regarding independent contractors is likely to hurt overall employment.
Labor Department Sued Over New Rule That Stands To Impact Independent Contractors in Promo
February 7, 2024 // “While the Labor Department believes the new rule will merely result in the independent contractor becoming an employee, insignificant consideration is given to the other alternative: Namely, that the employer could opt to end the position,” attorney Chuck Machion, senior vice president and senior counsel at ASI, has said.
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.
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.