Shortly after Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton placed independent contractor misclassification in the national spotlight in mid-July 2015 when she prominently commented in a campaign speech upon the expanding use of ICs in the “gig economy,” it has been reported that Senators Bob Casey (D-PA) and Al Franken (D-MN) have introduced…

This July was another month where independent contractor compliance and misclassification was a topic that made front page news. Hillary Clinton placed independent contractor misclassification in the national spotlight when she prominently mentioned the expanding use of ICs in the “gig economy” as an issue in the upcoming election campaign.…

Earlier today, Carmel DeAmicis of Re/code reported that Homejoy, the home cleaning start-up that uses independent contractors as their home cleaners, was closing down its operations due to four misclassification lawsuits filed against it.  This is not the first company in the sharing economy using on-demand contract workers to alter…

Earlier today, July 15, the Wage and Hour Administrator of the U.S. Department of Labor, Dr. David Weil, announced a new “Administrator’s Interpretation” addressing the misclassification of employees as independent contractors under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The 15-page Interpretation sets forth the test to be…

This article was published as a comprehensive three-part series in the Employment and Class Action sections of Law360 on July 7–9, 2015 as “The Costs of Worker Misclassification.” © Copyright 2015, Portfolio Media, Inc., publisher of Law360.  This article is based on the 2015 Update to my White Paper. …

Yesterday, as anticipated, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit adopted the decision of the Kansas Supreme Court that FedEx Ground drivers, as a matter of law, were employees and not independent contractors under the Kansas Wage Payment Act (KWPA). The Seventh Circuit had “certified” two questions to

…

On June 16, 2015, Forbes columnist and senior editor Daniel Fisher, who covers finance, the law, and how the two interact, posted on his column a guest post by Richard Reibstein, the publisher of this blog, entitled “Is Your Company On The Independent Contractor Hit List?”  The text of…

The month of June 2015 created more newspaper stories and blog posts on the subject of independent contractor misclassification than any other. Why? Uber lost an IC misclassification case and FedEx Ground agreed to pay $228 million to settle an IC misclassification case with its drivers in California. Those articles …