Jennifer Abruzzo
“Joint employer” status is under review again, months after the NLRB rescinded the Trump-era rule that made the status difficult to establish. In the process, the board asked a federal appeals court to keep the McDonald’s joint-employer settlement intact.
Ultimately, the NLRB is looking to overhaul existing business-friendly criteria and potentially reinstate the Obama-era standard that makes it easier for workers to prove that they’re not independent contractors but employees, who can organize in pursuit of higher pay and benefits. In the process of this review, the NLRB invited amicus briefs (due by February 10) on whether the existing independent contractor standard should stand (in accordance with a 2019 case involving SuperShuttle DFW, Inc. workers) or make way for a return to the 2014 standard (due to a case involving FedEx drivers).
Amid the joint-employer showdown at the NLRB, General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo claimed to Bloomberg Businessweek that many gig workers are “misclassified as independent contractors.” And as gig-economy battleground fights heat up in Massachusetts, California, and at the Supreme Court, business models of companies like Uber stand on precarious ground. Uber, Lyft and all gig-economy companies could face a strong headwind if the NLRB succeeds in changing guidelines on the classification of workers.
