My colleagues and I have posted on Epstein Becker & Green, P.C.’s Hospitality Labor and Employment Law blog concerning the U.S. Department of Labor’s Proposed New Rule to Determine Joint Employer Status under the Fair Labor Standards Act. In its proposed new rule, the DOL notes that the National Labor Relations Board is also engaged in rulemaking to set new standards for determining joint employer status under the National Labor Relations Act. Our blog post discusses the similarities and differences between the two proposed rules.
Following is an excerpt:
In the first meaningful revision of its joint employer regulations in over 60 years, on Monday, April 1, 2019 the Department of Labor (“DOL”) proposed a new rule establishing a four-part test to determine whether a person or company will be deemed to be the joint employer of persons employed by another employer. Joint employer status confers joint and several liability with the primary employer and any other joint employers for all wages due to the employee under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), and it’s often a point of dispute when an employee lodges claims for unpaid wages or overtime.
Under current DOL regulations, two or more employers acting entirely independently of each other may be deemed joint employers if they are “not completely disassociated” with respect to the employment of an employee who performs work for more than one employer in a workweek. In its proposal – a sharp departure from earlier Obama-era proposals to broaden the test for determining joint employer status to one based on economic realities – the DOL seeks to abandon the “not completely disassociated” test and has proposed to replace it with a four-part balancing test derived from Bonnette v. California Health & Welfare Agency, a 1983 decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. …