A proposal issued by the Department of Labor in late September would provide motor carriers with long-sought clarity on how to properly classify company employees vs. independent contractors, at least under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, whose gray areas often are used as a sword against fleets in lawsuits alleging driver misclassification.
A considerable drawback, though, is that the DOL’s new test for determining a worker’s status would have little impact on state-level labor laws — with which fleets will still need to comply even after the Labor Department finalizes its definition.
So while a fleet’s independent contractor set-up might be fine within FLSA under this updated definition from the Labor Department, state laws could be more restrictive in their definitions of an independent contractor, such as California’s A.B. 5 law, the nation’s most restrictive worker status law that in large part bans the use of independent contractors. (Motor carriers are operating under a court-issued exemption of that California law until a lawsuit against it unfolds.)
