A small group of political hires at the US Department of Labor is working to update the department’s approach to “joint employer” liability, sources familiar with the situation told Bloomberg Law. The department plans to restrict the scenarios in which one business is legally responsible for wage-and-hour violations by a contractually related company. It’s unclear whether the DOL plans to issue a proposed regulation through the notice-and-comment rulemaking process. The department could instead use other, less formal tools like opinion letters or field bulletins to signal a new approach to the joint employment question.