Posts tagged Fair Labor Standards Act
Freelancers defend economic liberty from vague DOL rule
January 25, 2024 // Kim Kavin is a freelance writer and editor from New Jersey. Kim writes and edits content for magazines, newspapers, and corporate brands and has authored multiple books. She is a past president of the professional association Boating Writers International, whose membership includes many freelance writers. Kim, along with Jen Singer and Deborah Abrams Kaplan, also from New Jersey, and Karon Warren, based in Georgia, founded an online group called Fight For Freelancers to contest policies like AB5 and the Department of Labor’s rule that seek to make it more difficult for them to work as independent contractors. Their livelihoods depend on them being able to work as freelancers, and they want to be able to keep the mutually beneficial business relationships they have with their clients. Represented free of charge by Pacific Legal Foundation, Fight For Freelancers, Kim, Jen, Deborah and Karon are asking a federal court to restore their right to earn an honest living without interference by the DOL’s illegally vague independent contractor rule.
New Study on California AB5 and Implications for the Department of Labor’s Independent Contractor Rule
January 18, 2024 // 1. First, employers may have hired some, but not most, independent contractors as employees, while other employers may have stopped working with their contractors based in California altogether. 2. Second, some employers may have extended employment opportunities to independent contractors who then declined such offers. Workers with a strong preference for flexible hours or for working with multiple clients, for instance, may not have wanted to work as traditional employees with one company. 3. Third, some small business owners may have been forced to shut down if they relied heavily on independent contractors and could not afford to hire them as employees or stopped working with independent contractors because of fear of compliance. This was highlighted by interviews of small business owners in the wake of AB5.
Biden Administration Launches War On Working Women With New Labor Rule
January 11, 2024 // The entrepreneurial spirit in America is under attack from an administration that seeks to force as many people as possible into traditional unionizable jobs against their wishes.”
Trucking groups slam DOL’s new worker classification rule as ‘un-American’
January 10, 2024 // The coordinated release of this rule with the renomination of Julie Su to lead the Department of Labor is proof positive that the Administration is doubling down on destructive policies that eliminate choice and opportunity for our workforce. Had Su actually taken the time to talk to independent contractors, she’d know firsthand what a misguided rule this really is. That is exactly why we opposed her nomination before and why we will continue to oppose it now. Radical California agendas have no place in federal policy.” Spear vowed that the ATA “will work with members of Congress and other stakeholders to defeat this ill-advised rule.” In a statement, the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) called the new requirements “burdensome,” adding that they “significantly limit the use of independent contractors in the trucking industry and threaten to force the reclassification of over 80 percent of intermodal drayage drivers that currently enjoy independent contractor status.”
Labor Department would ignore law to change overtime rules
November 16, 2023 // The DOL’s preamble to its proposals repeats as if a mantra its reliance upon “the authority that the FLSA grants to the Secretary to define and delimit the EAP exemption.” But in its repetitions of the define-and-delimit mantra, the DOL omits the part where the FLSA says the terms of the exemption are to be defined and delimited “by regulations of the Secretary, subject to the provisions of subchapter II of chapter 5 of Title 5.” Those provisions, known as the Administrative Procedure Act, require regulations to be adopted through a procedure that gives the public a chance to submit comments on a proposed regulation and requires the agency to respond to significant comments. The DOL proposal to make future increases in the salary levels automatic violates the Administrative Procedure Act’s requirements.
Op-Ed: Biden’s joint-employer rule is bad for workers
November 9, 2023 // Included in the Employee Rights Act are the commonsense provisions of the Save Local Business Act, which would provide much-needed clarity in determining joint-employer status and prevent franchise owners from becoming corporate middle managers. More specifically, the bills amend the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act to clarify that two or more employers must have “actual, direct, and immediate” control over employees to be considered joint employers. It rolls back a convoluted joint-employer scheme that threatens job creation and undermines the American dream, and it restores a commonsense definition of employer to provide certainty and stability for workers and job creators. Simply put, the Employee Rights Act seeks to update our nation’s labor policies to match the needs of the 21st-century worker and workforce.
Three New Regulations That Will Make It Harder to Serve the Needy
October 12, 2023 // In our Opportunity Playbook, we highlighted the Institute for the American Worker as an organization fighting for pro-labor policies that respect individual workers’ choices and freedom in the workforce. They join many others who are educating policymakers and regulators on how to ensure policies do not limit charitable organizations from serving communities.
Stefanik Re-Introduces the Modern Worker Empowerment Act to Protect Independent Contractors
September 15, 2023 // Congresswoman Elise Stefanik reintroduced the Modern Worker Empowerment Act, along with Congressman Kevin Kiley (CA-03) and Congresswoman Michelle Steel (CA-45), to update the Fair Labor Standards Act and the National Labor Relations Act to create a clear definition and standard across federal laws to protect independent workers. This comes as the Biden Administration’s Department of Labor is finalizing a new rule to create an obtuse multi-factor test that will undoubtedly lead to confusion for workers and take away opportunities from these individuals. With multitudes of differing state and federal statutes regulating independent contractors, the Modern Worker Empowerment Act will provide much needed clarity and stability for the American independent worker ensuring opportunities regardless of which state they reside.
Commentary: It’s Time to Retire the Labor Law
June 14, 2023 // Under a neutral public policy, an employer would be able to make a contribution to a pension plan or give access to a health plan to an independent contractor just as easily as to an employee. Finally, we need to treat labor contracts the same way we treat all commercial contracts, unless there is some compelling reason not to. We don’t tell people selling their house or a used car that they cannot sell below a minimum price. We don’t tell people selling their home that if doing so takes more than 40 hours a week, the sales price has to be 50 percent higher. People selling their labor services should enjoy just as much freedom of contract as they have in the sale of any other good or service.
Businesses Cry Foul on DOL Messaging for Trump Gig Worker Rule
May 8, 2023 // “My discussions with DOL investigators and the solicitor’s office out of Atlanta was exactly the same before the Trump regulations and after the Trump regulations,” McCutchen said. In her interactions with the agency, WHD investigators mentioned and recognized the agency was bound by the Trump rule, but didn’t follow the structure of the Trump test when analyzing whether one of her clients was a contractor or an employee, she said. “They didn’t say, ‘Let’s look at the two core factors,’” she explained, “or, ‘Now we’re going to look at the three additional factors,’ which is the structure of the Trump regulations. They didn’t do that.” The Trump rule has been in place for over two years, and given how it diverged from the Obama-era approach to worker classification, the department should be reaching out to field officers and offering training and guidance, said Michael Lotito, co-chair of Littler Mendelson PC’s Workplace Policy Institute. Simply acknowledging the rule isn’t enough, he added.