The Report: Supplemental Menu — Ready to Implement
Workplace Democracy Act
The decline of union density has unquestionably contributed to wage stagnation and the economic anxiety that plagues American workers. Workers need easier methods to organize, and union organizers need equal treatment under the law. To accomplish that, Representatives Pocan and Norcross and Senators Sanders and Gillibrand introduced the Workplace Democracy Act. The Workplace Democracy Act would:
· Make it easier for workers to support unions through a majority sign up process by allowing the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to certify a union as an exclusive bargaining representative if a majority of eligible workers sign valid authorization cards and the NLRB verifies that majority. Workers will get to elect which process to use to support unionization at their workplace, rather than allowing employers to dictate the course of action;
· Ensure companies cannot undermine a union as the exclusive bargaining representative of employees by denying a first contract. The bill requires an employer to begin negotiating within 10 days of receiving a request from a new union. If no agreement is reached after 90 days of negotiation, the parties can request to enter a compulsory mediation process. If no first contract is reached after 30 more days of mediation, the parties would have a contract imposed upon them through binding arbitration;
· Refine the definition of joint employer for the purposes of collective bargaining to maintain company’s bargaining responsibility regardless of whether or not they choose to contract out segments of their labor force; and
· Strengthen the rules that govern the lead-up to union elections. Specifically, it would require mandatory disclosure of monetary rewards paid to anti-union consulting firms; require companies to disclose any anti-union information they disseminate to workers; and impose a monetary penalty of at least $100,000 for each time a firm fails to disclose anti-union contact.
Workplace Action for a Growing Economy (WAGE) Act
Another effort to support unions and collective action to raise wages is the Workplace Action for a Growing Economy (WAGE) Act, which protects the freedom to join a union by providing prompt and fair remedies to deter unfair labor practices. This legislation would:
· Increase transparency by requiring employers to post notices of workers’ rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA);
· Create penalties to prevent violations of workers’ rights to join unions or engage in collective action. The WAGE Act guarantees penalties equal to twice the amount of an employee’s backpay, plus fines up to $50,000, for each violation resulting in discharge or serious economic harm;
· Strengthen remedies for workers who suffer retaliation for exercising their rights under the NLRA. It also guarantees working people a right to seek relief in federal court, similar to rights granted under other civil rights and employment laws;
· Prevent employers from misclassifying their employees as supervisors or independent contractors, and prevent workers from being denied backpay on the basis of their immigration status; and
· Streamline the process for workers to organize a union and negotiate a first contract.
Workers’ Freedom to Negotiate Act
The Workers’ Freedom to Negotiate Act, which builds on the WAGE Act mentioned above, has support from House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer. On top of the provisions of the WAGE Act, it strengthens remedies for unfair labor practices and modernizes labor law. Specifically, the Workers’ Freedom to Negotiate Act would:
· Prohibit employers from requiring employees to waive their right to engage in joint, collective, or class action litigation;
· Safeguard the ability of unions and employers to agree to assess fair share fees from all employees who benefit from the union’s representation, regardless of so-called “right to work laws” designed to prohibit these agreements;
· Prevent employers from requiring employees to participate in antiunion activities such as captive audience meetings designed to persuade employees against supporting the union;
· Prevent employers from interfering in union elections by removing employer standing in representation cases, which exist to determine workers’ free choice rather than the employer’s preference about how their employees should exercise their rights; and
· Remove limitations on “secondary” activities, including strikes and picketing, in solidarity with workers of other employers.
Explicitly Authorize Works Councils
While labor union participation is declining in the United States, other regions of the world are maintaining strong worker representation. In Europe and Japan, for example, the widespread use of works councils is improving worker voice and employer relationships. Simply put, the difference between unions and works councils is that works councils prioritize communication between management and employees and collaborate together to implement outside requirements and policies. Labor unions, on the other hand, have more power to bargain for employee rights including wages and benefits. Works councils result in what is often seen as mandatory consultation between management and employees.
Works councils and other forms of organizing are not a substitute for a traditional labor union, but during the current assault on labor unions in the United States, alternative forms of representation could be used to protect our workers.
Among the benefits of works councils, they increase productivity, improve worker skill levels, and foster more cooperation between workers and management. Studies have also found that works councils increase the enforcement of regulations, improve mutual trust, and provide more freedom for workers.
In recent history, the NLRB has held that works councils are allowed under the NLRA, but they must be elected. In 2015, the Volkswagen (VW) Chattanooga plant started to work toward implementing a works council as the only VW plant outside Russia and China without one. Its legality was challenged and the workers saw many more battles toward organizing. There is no doubt that workers in that plant would have been better off with a works council than with no union representation at all.
· Explicitly authorizing works councils in U.S. labor laws could go a long way toward re-empowering American workers. The success stories from around the globe are a strong indications that works councils can work with, rather than in conflict with, traditional labor unions.
We must be careful to ensure that works councils do not simply become company funded pseudo-unions. The possibilities are exciting, but must be well-crafted.
Explore Sectoral Bargaining
Similar to works councils, sectoral bargaining is a concept that has been successful in Europe and could have positive impacts on American workers. The idea is to have industry-wide standards that are collectively bargained for across all employers. This approach is more efficient in industries that have similar worker concerns and compensate their employees for similar work.
In the United States, sectoral bargaining was once encouraged by federal law, but was replaced by enterprise bargaining, what we know today, by the NLRA. Sectoral bargaining results in less worker turnover at individual companies since terms and conditions of employment are so similar throughout the industry. It also allows workers to benefit from the experiences of other workers in the same field at different companies. This could result in higher wages, better training opportunities, and safer workplace conditions across an industry. It gives all companies an incentive to become “high road” employers and less of an incentive to union-bust.
This method of organizing is admittedly radically different than the one we currently rely on in the United States.
· An incremental approach, such as authorizing sectoral bargaining in one sector as a pilot program, would be beneficial to allow workers, employers, and current labor unions the ability to determine whether this kind of approach will work well in the United States. When first exploring, the government should not be involved as a voice at the table in the negotiations.
Mandatory Worker Representation on Boards
Another way to ensure that workers have a voice in their workplace that is short of creating a labor union is to require worker representation on corporate boards. Due to company hostility, lack of worker interest, or many other factors, full labor unions are not always possible in a workplace. Ensuring that workers’ perspectives are being heard on board matters is imperative to ensuring that decisions do not adversely affect workers.
In Germany, the concept is called codetermination. By law, just short of half of the supervisory board of directors is elected by the workers at companies with more than 2,000 employees and one third is elected for companies with at least 500 employees. These positions are in addition to any other labor organizing that may take place at a company, whether it be a labor union or a works council. In Germany, this model has resulted in increased productivity.
The United States has some basis to show that this kind of representation would likely be fruitful. Employee Stock Ownership Plans, in which employees are encouraged to take an ownership stake in their own firms, have results suggesting that the programs increase compensation, productivity, job satisfaction, and profitability. Combining employee ownership with increased employee participation may generate significant returns on investment.
· Requiring mandatory worker representation on the boards of all publicly-held companies would set up a system where worker concerns are always taken into consideration.
Tie Overtime to Inflation
Currently, Americans earning less than $23,660 in certain industries are eligible for time-and-a-half overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week. This earnings threshold is set by the U.S. Department of Labor and has only been updated once since the 1970s, and as a result, the number of workers covered by the overtime rule has fallen dramatically due to the effects of inflation. It is imperative that the American middle class receives fair pay for their work. The current overtime rule covers only a small fraction of Americans, and it is important to protect working families with fair wages. This is why we must tie overtime pay for inflation, so that the economy, not politicians decide when hard working Americans receive overtime pay. Our labor policies should not be stuck in the 1970s.
We need to honor our agreement with workers — that if you make under a certain amount and work more than 40 hours per week, you get overtime. This is a simple and fair protection for the American worker, and one that many businesses already have in place. Congress needs to establish an overtime threshold that is tied to inflation so this problem does not keep repeating itself. To do that, Congress should:
· Enact the Restoring Overtime Pay Act, which codifies the Obama Administration’s Overtime Rule which adjusts overtime pay to $47,476 and automatically updates it to keep pace with inflation every three years.
Real Investment in Training
If we are going to invest in helping folks get the job training they need in an increasingly competitive economy, then the government should be running training programs that actually work. Unfortunately, the current system is exacerbating a divide between federal job-training and landing a job in high-demand is growing. We have to make sure these training programs are developing skills focused on finding employment.
A recent Department of Labor report found that current job-training programs are largely ineffective at raising wages. Clearly, there is huge room for improvement, and our goal is to meet this challenge and make these programs work all around the country. These training programs need to train workers in skills that industry actually needs, and ensure that the programs themselves are designed around participants. Combining these two simple benchmarks would go a long way in keeping our promise to the American worker.
In an economy that is in a constant state of evolution and where “disruption” is a good word, the ability for workers to be trained in these new and emerging fields is vital. If a worker in Michigan decides they need to hop over Lake Michigan and work in Wisconsin in a similar field, we need to make sure we provide them with training programs to prepare them for this shift. The ability for folks to climb the ladder towards higher earnings comes by ensuring they have the skills necessary to do so.
Better, More Strategic Labor Law Enforcement
More than any other agency in government, the Wage and Hour Division (WHD) at the Department of Labor is charged with fighting for the little guy and making sure employers play by the rules. The many enforcement duties of WHD include: ensuring American workers are paid the minimum wage and overtime wages they earn; preventing children from being forced to work; protecting individuals who take leave to attend to illness or birth of a child; and ensuring that our employment-based immigration system does not displace American workers or job seekers. WHD investigators turn legal phrases into meaningful protections for hardworking Americans across the country every day.
Workers are not the only ones who benefit from a strong WHD. Since 2010, WHD has begun to transition from a complaint based enforcement program to a strategic program.[xv] This allows investigators to use data and analytics to conduct more effective and efficient enforcement, targeting industries and employers with a history of violations and where large numbers of vulnerable workers are found. Between 2010 and 2015, the number of strategic investigations grew from 27 percent to 42 percent. Over that same period the “the percent of [strategic] investigations with no violations fell to 21 percent, down from 30 percent in FY 2010, while the percent of complaint investigations with no violations fell to 18 percent, down from 26 percent in FY 2010.” Not only does a more successful and efficient enforcement program level the playing field for employers who are in compliance, it also helps reduce compliance costs for all employers. The successes of WHD were only made possible by allocating additional resources to the division, and with that taxpayers have seen a strong return on their investment. Between 2009 and 2016, WHD leveraged an additional $34 million and 87 full time employees to put nearly $1.6 billion in back wages into the pockets of workers.
In order to continue this level of effectiveness, we must fully fund the WHD. In addition, we must enact legislation that creates deterrents for employers to commit violations in the first place. Unfortunately, current law creates incentives for unscrupulous employers to cheat workers out of pay and deal with the consequences later. The Wage Theft Prevention and Wage Recovery Act would:
· Require employers to pay all wages owed to an employee. Currently, workers can only recover wages at the minimum wage or, for overtime hours, 1.5 times their regular wage;
· Require employers to provide initial disclosures of the terms of their employment and regular paystubs to all employees and create a civil fine for noncompliance;
· Require employers to pay final paychecks within 14 days of separation or by the payday for the pay period, whichever is earlier; the employer will owe the employee in question her daily wage for each day beyond this period that the paycheck goes unpaid, for a maximum of 30 days;
· Create a civil penalty of at least $2,000 if employers violate minimum wage and overtime protections under the FLSA, and — for the first time — enforce the protection guaranteeing workers their full compensation. The Act would also increase the existing civil penalty for willful or repeat violations to $10,000;
· Increase the damages that employees who are victims of wage theft are entitled to, totaling triple the owed wages amount, plus interest assessed on the original owed wages;
· Strengthen protections for employees who are illegally fired by their employer as retaliation for filing a complaint concerning wage theft or cooperating with a DOL investigation;
· Increase the time that employees have to bring a claim for owed wages from two years to four years;
· Make it easier for employees to take collective action to recover their stolen wages by removing the current requirement that employees affirmatively “opt-in” to engage in a collective action under the FLSA; and
· Deter repeat offenses by directing DOL to refer to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution those employers who consistently violate WHD rules.
End Mandatory Arbitration as a Condition of Employment
Mandatory arbitration is a contract clause that requires any dispute between the employer and employee must be solved through arbitration, rather than through the court system. Making matters worse, federal courts up to and including the Supreme Court have found that these agreements can be coupled with bans on class actions, therefore preventing employees from joining together to fight systemic corporate wrongdoing. The problem has been exacerbated, as a result of the Supreme Court, over the last three decades.
Mandatory arbitration forces employees into a privatized and often inferior shadow court in which they are far less likely to prevail, and if they do prevail, they face greater obstacles to recover their due. Further, once the dispute is arbitrated, there is no legal pathway for appeal and many arbitration agreements lack due process protections found in court.
President Obama sought to remedy this via the federal contracting process, specifically the Fair Pay for Safe Workplaces Executive Order, which among other things required companies to remove mandatory arbitration clauses from employment contracts, and stop requiring it as a term of future employment. However, Congressional Republicans with the support of President Trump repealed the rule.
To restore workers’ rights, Congress should pass the Arbitration Fairness Act, which would:
· Effectively ban all mandatory arbitration as a condition of employment by clarifying that “no pre-dispute arbitration agreement shall be valid or enforceable if it requires arbitration of an employment dispute, consumer dispute, antitrust dispute, or civil rights dispute.”
Earned Income Tax Credits
Despite forty years of wage stagnation in America, the richest one percent continue to be the winners, most recently with the latest tax overhaul. At the same time, working families are entering the ninth straight year without an increase in the minimum wage. Tax reform must do more to reward working families, and, in turn, build strength in the economy.
Expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) to reach more working families, as well as childless workers, is a proven option to successfully put more money back into the pockets of the middle class. The Grow American Incomes Now (GAIN) Act will make sure all workers can keep more of the money they earned for their work by:
· Nearly doubling the EITC for working families and increasing the credit for childless workers almost six-fold. The maximum tax credit available increases to $12,131 for families with three or more qualifying children; $10,783 with two qualifying children; $6,528 with one qualifying child; and $3,000 with no qualifying children. Currently, a family of three can receive a maximum credit of $6,318 and someone with no children can receive at most a $510 tax credit; and
· Phasing out at higher income levels and remaining fully refundable.
Fairness to Workers in the Wake of Corporate Tax Cuts
In order to fully recharge the American economy, corporations benefiting from a newly-lowered corporate tax rate should invest their windfall in the American workforce, but history suggests that they will not do this proactively. In conjunction with any corporate tax rate decrease, Congress should require companies to:
· Reinvest in their workforce by returning outsourced jobs back to American soil, addressing profit-sharing loopholes and tax incentives, and raising wages for the American workforce.
It is well-past time we lift our economy from the ground up, instead of waiting for corporations to dictate when benefits will trickle down.
In the wake of the tax-code re-write, corporations were quick to herald their imminent tax breaks by promising one-time bonuses, and in some cases, a modest increase to their minimum wage. A true reinvestment of corporate tax breaks, however, would be a meaningful increased minimum wage benefiting the whole of the American workforce. Bigger paychecks for the middle-class cannot be a one-time bonus, or done on a case-by-case basis.
Fair Trade
Our nation’s trade policies must focus on outcomes that are fair for the American worker. Agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and U.S.- Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) allowed governments, not markets, to pick winners and losers. Our country’s trade agreement text is classified and not available to the public. Providing transparency to folks in every industry and trade allows for increased input and opens the process up those who are not lobbyists. To rectify this, Congress should pass the Promoting Transparency in Trade Act, which:
· Requires the text of trade deals to be published after each round of negotiations.
The special interest provisions embedded in existing trade and globalization deals have real impacts on American jobs and wages. Instead of those provisions, new deals should include robust protections for labor and the environment with a structure for swift and certain enforcement. Doing so will help end the race to the bottom in wages and standards that harms workers in the U.S. and abroad and encourages the offshoring of jobs.
Currency manipulation is another major barrier to fair trade. Countries artificially lower and devalue their own currencies, making goods produced there cheaper for countries abroad. This helps their domestic markets and hurts ours by raising the cost comparison. Workers in the United States can compete with any country on an even playing field, but they cannot compete against protectionist monetary policies put in place by Central Banks. Addressing this issue is vital to the ideals of fair trade.
We have seen that free trade is not free — it comes at a huge cost to so many of us. We must ensure that our trade agreements are fair, and do not create an environment where jobs are free to move offshore.
Pursue and Protect Full Employment Policies by the Federal Reserve
As part of its statutory mission, the Federal Reserve is required to “promote full employment and production, increased real income, balanced growth,…adequate productivity growth, proper attention to national priorities, achievement of an improved trade balance… and reasonable price stability.”[xxiv] Republican Members of Congress and prominent members of the Trump Administration, along with their billionaire and corporate allies, have sought to roll back or eliminate this full employment mandate.
To help support our workers and our economy:
· The Federal Reserve should use all tools at its disposal to constantly pursue its full employment mandate;
· Congress must remind both the public at-large and Federal Reserve policymakers of the extraordinary value the full employment mandate plays in the American economy; and
· The Senate must refuse to confirm nominees to the Board of Governors who have called for the narrowing of the Fed’s full employment mandate, or who support polices that would undermine the Fed’s ability to pursue full employment.
Curb Executive Pay
Income inequality is one of the defining issues facing Americans today. In the United States, income disparity has increased dramatically over the past several decades. The top percentile of Americans control an increasing amount of our nation’s wealth, and economic mobility has declined as a result of this trend. The increases in the cost of health care, housing, and education are also driving economic anxiety among working women and men who are seeing their income decrease more and more with inflation. At the same time, executive and CEO pay is rising rapidly. The American worker is seeing their paycheck stay flat, while their CEO’s bonus package is more than they will make in their life. With this gap in pay growing, less people have the opportunity to grow and move upward. Information on the Russell 1000, a listing of the top 1,000 U.S. companies, indicates that they have a median CEO to worker pay ratio of 235-to-one and that the average CEO today made $15.7 million annually in 2017.
It is critical that we work to preserve the American dream. Americans should have confidence they can achieve economic security and a better life for their children through hard work and playing by the rules. Public policy can play a role in encouraging economic mobility and ensuring equal opportunity — workers and shareholders should have a voice in shaping these massive executive payments. While not everyone is going to be a CEO of a large corporation, allowing the vast majority of wealth in this country to consolidate in the top-floors and corner offices of corporations, while workers see no growth in their paycheck is simply not sustainable.
· Congress should pass the CEO Accountability and Responsibility Act (H.R. 3633), which incentivizes companies to improve CEO-to-worker pay ratios by increasing corporate tax rates for publicly traded companies with larger than a 100-to-1 ratio of pay between CEOs and workers. At the same time, the legislation would decrease corporate tax rates on those companies below that threshold.
Card Check
The effort to reform business regulations has outpaced the effort to reform worker protection regulations. The ability for workers to have a voice in the workplace is threatened daily. Under current rules, workers must file a petition with the NLRB demonstrating there is sufficient interest among employees to conduct an election. If petition authorization forms, often referred to as “cards,” affirm at least 30 percent of employees are interested in joining a union, the NLRB will agree to conduct an election. Frequently, these cards demonstrate interest from over 50 percent of voting employees, promising success of a union election. Despite this demonstration of support, workers then face a complicated process, as well as threats, intimidation, coercion, and worse, if an employer does not elect to recognize the union based on a verified 50 percent of votes, that can lasts months or years to get an election, let alone unionization. This all detrimentally affects industrial stability in the economy.
Republicans are attempting to reverse the modest progress made by the Obama Administration in streamlining this process. There is increased manipulation of the system to undermine union support. If successful, representation elections will be delayed by an average of 198 days, sending our workplace representation system back to the dark ages. In cases where a post-election hearing is held to hear challenges to the election, the certification of results were delayed on average by 382 days after the vote, wasting employees’ time and taxpayers’ dollars conducting an election where the outcome is already known does nothing to advance workers’ rights. It only serves to help unscrupulous employers that will stop at nothing to stifle employees’ voices in the workplace.
· Efforts should refocus on streamlining regulations that protect workers’ voice, require neutrality agreements, and authorize the use of majority sign-up, or card check, a policy that would recognize a union if more than 50 percent of employees sign an authorization card.
· Congress should also codify the current NLRA Election Rule enacted in December 2014 and implemented in April 2015 to make it more difficult for the Administration to undermine this practice.
The concept allows workers, rather than corporations, the choice to unionize through a simple majority sign-up process. This process works well at the small number of workplaces that permit it. Union workers are better off by almost every metric. Neutrality agreements and card check support workers’ democratic right to choose a representative to bargain for their fair share, raise the wages of working men and women, and pump billions of dollars into the American economy.
Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act
Research shows that union members employed by a state government earn 17 percent more than their non-union counterparts, and union members employed by a local government earn 35 percent more than their non-union counterparts.
Unfortunately, many states outright prohibit their public-sector employees from engaging in collective bargaining to improve wages or working conditions. As demonstrated by this year’s wave of strikes by teachers fighting for decent pay and school funding, our public services depend on the well-being of the professionals who protect and serve the public.
To stand with the public sector unions that fight for our country’s 17.3 million public employees including teachers, police officers, and firefighters, Congress should pass the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act, which empowers the Federal Labor Relations Authority to protect the rights of state, territorial, and local government employees to:
· Form, join, or assist unions, to bargain collectively, and to join together to engage in other activities to improve their working conditions;
· Have their union recognized by their public employer through democratic procedures;
· Have a procedure for resolving any impasses in collective bargaining, and to authorize the deduction of fees to support the union; and
· Have all rights, responsibilities, and protections enforced by state law.
Indexing the Minimum Wage
As discussed above, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would help over 41 million low-wage American workers, including the parents of 19 million American children. This policy alone would raise wages for a third of our nation’s workforce. Raising the wage, however, is a short-term solution.
In addition to increasing the minimum wage, the Raise the Wage Act requires that wage to be adjusted based on the percentage increase, if any, in the median hourly wages of all employees. Other options for continually updating the minimum wage would be to set it to increase if inequality reaches a certain threshold. As a particularly bold measure, it could be tied to economy-wide productivity growth. Between 1938 and 1968, wages and productivity rose in tandem in the absence of formal indexation. Since then, however, 90 percent of workers’ pay has lagged far behind productivity growth (Figure 1). Using this measure would cause the minimum wage to skyrocket, but might have the effect of making the minimum wage higher than median wages. In fact, EPI estimates that in 2024 the minimum wage would be $21.36 with this measure.
Ban Rate Setting for Independent Contractors
More and more American firms are shedding workers and focusing on “core competencies.” Segmented industries and workplaces have higher rates of wage theft, workplace injuries, and lead to stagnant wages. We have addressed some of this problem via a stronger joint employer standard, but another chronic symptom of the problem is one related to misuse and abuse of independent contractors. In a society where so much of our safety net is tied to one’s job status, it is critical to prevent employers from abusing this classification and ensure that workers are protected when companies do utilize it.
In order to protect against misclassification, Congress should enact the following reforms:
· Adopt FLSA’s “suffer or permit” test into other federal statutes;
· In industries where misclassification and fissuring are endemic, define workers as employees of whatever firms purchase their labor;
· Develop concrete guidance for courts and agencies required to apply such statutes; and
· Place the burden of proof on the party seeking to avoid employment status.
Additionally, Congress must establish procedural safeguards during contract negotiations to better ensure that workers know their legal rights. Employees often think, for example, that they have protections against unfair dismissal, that employers cannot hire permanent strike replacements, and that they have a right to refuse dangerous work. Employees who are misclassified as independent contractors may not recognize that they have different legal rights than employees.
In other contexts in which parties to contracts have unequal information, regulators and courts have often responded by requiring or strongly encouraging parties with more information to disclose it. The mandated HUD disclosures prior to entering into a residential real estate transaction are one example. Absent such disclosures, the contract is simply invalid.[xxxii]
Requiring firms to disclose the following to workers prior to entering into a labor contract could reduce the incidence of misclassification:
· The fact that as an independent contractor, the worker is ineligible for various labor and employment law protections;
· Data on the incidence of misclassification generally, and in their particular industry;
· A summary of any recent court and agency decisions in their industry finding workers to be misclassified or finding questions of fact regarding misclassification;
· A clear statement that they have the right to contest their employment status, and that if they are found to be employees they will be eligible for numerous additional rights;
· A clear statement that nothing they sign today determines their employment status, but rather that status is determined by a number of factors, including the degree of control exercised by the firm hiring them, the existence of entrepreneurial opportunities in their work with that firm, and their economic dependence upon the firm; and
· Contact information for local administrative agencies, workforce development boards, and legal services organizations that could help them contest their employment status.
Any failure to disclose any of the following would result in the worker being classified as an employee; the employer being liable for treble damages for any economic harm suffered though wage/hour violations, failure to reimburse expenses, and failure to withhold taxes; and the employer being liable to cover any legal fees incurred by workers or administrative agencies to enforce their legal rights.
In addition, requiring firms to have independent worker representatives present, and available to explain workers’ rights to them, prior to entering a valid employment contract, could reduce the incidence of misclassification. Those worker representatives could be attorneys, law students, or individuals certified by a local workforce development board or other worker rights nonprofit.
