“It is outrageous for the Department of Labor to set policy in such an important area through the device of an opinion letter,” Mr. Weil said. “The Obama administration discontinued opinion letters precisely because they are a capricious tool for settling complicated regulatory questions.”
Kathleen M. Anderson, a partner at the law firm Barnes Thornburg, who represents employers in misclassification cases, agreed that the department appeared to have broader policy ambitions in devising its letter.
“This doesn’t read like a normal opinion letter,” Ms. Anderson said. “You go back historically to most opinion letters and they are short, defined, with multiple disclaimers. This is expansive — it’s back to the basics, applicable to numerous situations.”
Based on the description in the opinion letter, the company that sought it is evidently not Lyft, which went public in March, or Uber, which plans to go public in the coming weeks.
But the letter could nonetheless have important implications for these companies. Uber, in its filing for a public offering, told prospective investors that having to classify drivers as employees would cause it to “incur significant additional expenses” and “require us to fundamentally change our business model, and consequently have an adverse effect on our business and financial condition.”
Lyft has made similar statements.
In recent years, both companies and a variety of other gig-economy operations have been aggressive in seeking legislation and regulatory rulings to ensure that their workers are classified as contractors.
There are no precise figures for the number of workers in the nation’s online gig economy, but an estimate based on the methodology of two former Obama administration officials suggests there are one million to five million at any time. Other researchers have produced similar estimates.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/business/economy/gig-economy-workers-contractors.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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