Michael S. Kun, Member of the Firm in the Employment, Labor & Workforce Management practice, in the firm’s Los Angeles office, was quoted in Law360, in “Calif. Bill Floated to Undo Dynamex Worker Classification Test,” by Mike LaSusa. (Read the full version – subscription required.)
Following is an excerpt:
California Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez has announced proposed legislation that would loosen the criteria employers use to classify workers as independent contractors, undoing the state Supreme Court’s landmark Dynamex decision from earlier this year. …
Michael Kun of Epstein Becker Green, who specializes in employment law, told Law360 that dissatisfaction with the Dynamex ruling could unite both employers and workers who want to be classified as independent contractors.
“This is one of those rare decisions where you might have people on both sides of the equation who want the same thing,” Kun said.
Kun said the long-standing Borello standard had provided security for businesses and workers “that if they really wanted to create an independent contractor relationship, they could do it.”
But, he said, the ABC standard’s second criteria — that the work performed must be “outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business” — would disqualify many workers from being classified as independent contractors.
Still, the use of the ABC standard isn’t uncommon in the U.S. Various other states use some form of the three-part test, Kun told Law360.
“You really can’t say that California is doing something dramatically different than what other states are [doing], but it is doing something now that is dramatically different than what it was doing before,” Kun said.
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