Skip to main content

What I've Been Reading This Week


This was one of those weeks where I found several great articles on employee or independent contractor misclassification issues that I wanted to highlight.  Something tells me these disputes have no intention of dying down anytime soon.

As always, below are a few articles that caught my eye this week.


Class Action to Proceed Against Uber

Earlier this year, a lawsuit was brought by three Uber drivers against the company and demanded they be reclassified as employees rather than independent contractors.  In early September, a District Judge in San Francisco held that these employees can proceed with a class action against the company.  As a result, this class action will now cover around 160,000 Uber drivers in California.  Should these plaintiffs win, they seek expenses and the full amount of tips received on the job.  It goes without saying that the outcome of this case could have a huge impact on Uber and other similar companies such as Lyft, Grubhub, etc.


Grubhub, DoorDash, and Caviar Face Worker Misclassification Suits

Complaints have been recently filed against Grubhub, DoorDash, and Caviar on the grounds that workers for these companies have been misclassified as independent contractors instead of employees.  As the Los Angeles Times article pointed out, the complaints against Grub Hub and DoorDash are both class actions while the Caviar complaint is only a demand for arbitration at this time.  These complaints have alleged many of the arguments that have already been raised:  workers for these companies were treated as employees but were not provided any of the benefits (ie reimbursement for gas, parking, phone data, etc.).  These cases are still in the early stages of litigation but well worth keeping an eye on.


The Wave of Misclassification Suits Continues

Fortune has a good article on the increasing number of employee/independent contractor misclassification suits that has started to arise.  Kia Kokalitcheva writes that companies such as Uber, Lyft, Doordash, and Grubhub, among others, have been hit with misclassification suits recently.  Since these companies employ a large workforce (and identify them as independent contractors), it should not be too surprising that this is a hot spot for litigation.  While some of these companies are fighting the misclassification claims, the article noted that companies such as Luxe Valet and Shyp recently chose to convert their contract workers to employees rather than litigate the issue.  Time will tell whether this decision to not fight the claims works...but for now, it certainly gets them out of the cross hairs of these suits and away from the public resentment.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum, it was noted that emplo
Post a Comment
Read more

Happening Tomorrow: Connecticut’s Minimum Wage Increases

For those employers and employees alike in Connecticut, mark your calendars as tomorrow, the minimum wage rate increases in the state from $13/hour to $14/hour. This wage hike comes after Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont had signed Public Act 19-4 into law in 2019 which progressively raised the state’s hourly minimum wage rate every year for five years.  In fact, next year, the hourly wage rate will top out at $15/hour.  Beginning in January of 2024, the hourly wage rate will be indexed to the employment cost index. For additional information:   https://portal.ct.gov/Office-of-the-Governor/News/Press-Releases/2022/06-2022/Governor-Lamont-Reminds-Residents-That-Minimum-Wage-Is-Scheduled-To-Increase-on-Friday
Post a Comment
Read more

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

A few years ago, I remember when the “Fight for $15” movement was taking off around the country.  Lo and behold, it appears that a $15/hour minimum wage is not the stopping point, which should be no surprise.  As the below article notes, New York is aggressively moving to ramp up hourly wage rates even higher.  While all the  below articles are worth a read, I called particular attention to that one. As always, below are a couple article that caught my eye this week. Disney World Workers Reject Latest Contract Offer Late last week, it was announced that workers at Disney World had rejected the most recent contract offer from the company, calling on their employer to do better.  As Brooks Barnes at The New York Times writes, the unions that represent about 32,000 workers at Disney World reported their members resoundingly rejected the 5 year contract offer which would have seen workers receive a 10% raise and retroactive increased back pay.  While Disney’s offer would have increased pa
Post a Comment
Read more