Co-employment

I like to blame the Vizcaino v. Microsoft case for the ongoing misconceptions around co-employment and tenure limits. I remember the headlines. The standouts used the term "permatemps" to refer to the long-term independent contractors who were suing Microsoft for benefits back in the '90s.

With everyone's focus firmly on Brexit, it's easy to forget that HMRC is gearing up to introduce possibly the biggest regulatory change to the private sector in more than a decade.

In our last post, we discussed how companies engaging contingent workers through staffing firms can be overzealous in their desire to avoid the perceived risks of co-employment. But such efforts to avoid co-employment can create situations that are discriminatory - inviting reputational risks, lower productivity, and lawsuits to occur.

Co-employment has been debated among lawyers, employers and suppliers of contingent labor ad nauseam for decades. High-profile, multi-million dollar judgments such as those against Nationwide Mutual Insurance and Microsoft have led many companies to take steps to avoid being deemed co-employers of their contingent workers.

Last week, the Toronto Star reported that safety audits of temporary staffing agencies by Ontario's workers' compensation board fell by 80% in 2018 from 2016. According to documents the newspaper obtained through a Freedom of Information request, the board conducted 85 audits of temporary help agencies in 2018, down from 454 in 2016.

In the legal sense, contract employees assigned to staffing clients will always be characterized as employees of the staffing firm.

Last month, Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner signed into law House Bill 690, which amended the state's Day and Temporary Labor Services Act to impose additional requirements on staffing agencies.

Regardless of your sector, you have come across mention of the 'gig economy' - the growing trend where organiztions contract with independent workers for short-term employment. The gig economy is not new; it's a metamorphosis of temporary staffing.

While the "gig economy" continues to be a buzzword trend, self-employment has proven to be a movement that is here to stay. More than 40% of the U.S. adult workforce reports either currently working or having worked independently at some point in their careers, and there are now a seemingly limitless range of work options for the self-employed.