Will Driver Misclassification Issues Ease Under Trump Administration?
Independent contractors operating at ports, like the Port of Long Beach, are challenging their status. Photo: Jim Park
">Independent contractors operating at ports, like the Port of Long Beach, are challenging their status. Photo: Jim Park
">In “The End of Employees,” the Wall Street Journal recently said, “Never before have American companies tried so hard to employ so few people.”
It points out, for instance, that “the men and women who unload shipping containers at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. warehouses are provided by trucking company Schneider National Inc.'s logistics operation, which in turn subcontracts with temporary-staffing agencies.”
In fact, the Journal reports, “the contractor model is so prevalent that Google parent Alphabet Inc., ranked by Fortune magazine as the best place to work for seven of the past 10 years, has roughly equal numbers of outsourced workers and full-time employees, according to people familiar with the matter.”
For many companies, the idea of focusing on your “core business” and outsourcing other tasks is a path to better efficiency and profitability.
However, while American companies may want to use more independent contractors, governments and workers who feel they are being improperly misclassified are pushing back. And that's not likely to change too drastically under the new Trump administration.
The Obama Administration, through the Labor Department and the IRS, worked to crack down on workers who were believed to have been “misclassified” as independent contractors when they really were treated as employees.
Meanwhile, in the courts, private class action lawsuits have targeted companies such as Uber and FedEx. Just last month, a court found that Swift contract drivers should have been employees.
Richard J. Reibstein, Pepper Hamilton LLP, writing for Law360, points out that during the Obama administration, the U.S. Congress did not pass a single bill to address the issue of independent contractor classification.
However, since the DOL announced its “Misclassification Initiative” in September 2011, 35 state labor departments have signed a memorandum ...Read the rest of this story
