The labor board\u2019s chair, Lauren McFerran, who was named by President Biden, said in a statement that the ruling was \u201ca disappointing setback,\u201d but \u201cnot the last word\u201d on the joint-employer standard. If the board appeals the ruling, the case would move to the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The labor agency pushed for the case to be moved to Washington, but Judge Barker denied that request.<\/p>\n

The rule in dispute, issued in October by the labor board\u2019s Democratic majority, would classify a parent company as a joint employer if it has control \u2014 direct or indirect \u2014 over even one condition of employment. The current standard, adopted in 2020 when the board was led by Republicans, classifies a company as a joint employer only if it exerts direct control over workers.<\/p>\n

Nurses hired by a staffing agency, for example, may work at a hospital that determines their schedules but does not directly establish their pay. If those nurses seek to unionize, they may argue that the hospital indirectly determines their pay based on how much it pays to contract their work. Under the rule issued in October, the hospital would probably be considered a joint employer, but under the current standard, it would have an easier time arguing that the onus falls only on the staffing agency that signs the nurses\u2019 paychecks.<\/p>\n

The new rule \u201cwould treat virtually every entity that contracts for labor as a joint employer because virtually every contract for third-party labor has terms that impact, at least indirectly, at least one of the specified \u2018essential terms and conditions of employment,\u2019\u201d Judge Barker wrote in his decision.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which led a group of business groups challenging the rule, applauded the ruling. \u201cIt will prevent businesses from facing new liabilities related to workplaces they don\u2019t control, and workers they don\u2019t actually employ,\u201d Suzanne P. Clark, chief executive of the chamber, said in a statement. The labor board\u2019s chair, Lauren<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45253"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/manitimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}