Patrick G. Brady, a Member of the Firm in the Employment, Labor & Workforce Management practice, in the Firm’s Newark office, was quoted in Bloomberg BNA, in “Wage-Hour Enforcement Unchanged, Labor Department Official Says,” by Chris Opfer.
Following is an excerpt:
Pat Brady, who represents businesses as an attorney at Epstein Becker & Green, told Bloomberg BNA July 17 that the administrator interpretations marked a shift in emphasis for the Labor Department instead of a wholesale change in its approach to the classification and joint employer issues.
“The words never really changed,” Brady said of the joint employer and classification tests under the Fair Labor Standards Act. “What changed is the nuance and the emphasis.”
Specifically, Brady said the classification administrator interpretation focused more on whether independent contractors operate as a “stand-alone business” and less on the relationship between the contractor and the entity for which it performs work. He also said the joint employer document shifted focus to potential indirect control by one business of another business’s workers, similar to the expanded test recently adopted by the National Labor Relations Board in its Browning-Ferris Industries of California Inc. decision.
Brady said the administrator interpretations didn’t have the force of law.
“A lot of these cases are decided by the courts, not the Department of Labor,” he said.
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