Article by: Christopher Wilkinson, Michael Disotell and Joe Liburt
Effective June 7, 2017, the Department of Labor ("DOL") has withdrawn informal guidance on independent contractors and joint employment. The guidance on independent contractors came from an Administrator's Interpretation released in 2015 and was the result of the DOL's renewed focus on worker misclassification. In it, the DOL seized upon a broad definition of "employ" under the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA")—"to suffer or permit to work"—to conclude that "most workers are employees under the FLSA." The DOL's guidance on joint employment was released in 2016 and also came from an Administrator's Interpretation. The guidance provided a broad interpretation of joint employment in the wake of the NLRB's Browning-Ferris decision. It also distinguished between "horizontal" joint employment, which occurs when the employee has an employment relationship with two or more sufficiently related employers, and "vertical" joint employment, which occurs when the employee has an employment relationship with one employer (such a staffing agency or subcontractor), but economic realities show that he or she is economically dependent upon another entity.
In a press release announcing the withdrawn guidance, the DOL noted, "Removal of the administrator interpretations does not change the legal responsibilities of employers under the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act, as reflected in the department's long-standing regulations and case law. The department will continue to fully and fairly enforce all laws within its jurisdiction, including the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act."
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