Trucking news and briefs for Monday, Oct. 9, 2023:
A Department of Labor rulemaking to rescind a Trump-era rule for determining employee or independent contractor classification under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) has taken another step toward being implemented.
The Biden Administration’s DOL last October published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would reverse one of President Donald Trump's last acts in office by returning to the department's prior analysis for worker classification under FLSA. The full text of the NPRM can be seen here.
On Sept. 28, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) received the final rule, which if cleared by OMB, will be published in the Federal Register to take effect. OMB typically has 90 days to review the rule, but that review period can be extended.
The Trump-era rule, which was one of the last acts of the former president’s administration, had a test to determine if a worker was independent or an employee that relied on five factors, but put greater emphasis on two -- the nature and degree of the worker’s control over the work and the worker’s opportunity for profit or loss.
The other factors include: the amount of skill required for the work; the degree of permanence of the working relationship between the worker and the potential employer; and whether the work is part of an integrated unit of production.
That rule took effect in March 2022, following a court ruling striking down the Biden DOL's withdrawal of the rule a year earlier.
