From the Legal Intelligencer, Christian Petrucci, discusses a recent workers compensation case in Pennsylvania in which the court said that the 2010 Construction Workplace Misclassification Act (CWMA) could not be applied retroactively. Christian writes: On appeal to the Commonwealth Court, the defendants argued that either the board improperly applied the CWMA retroactively or the…
From The Legal Intelligencer, Christian Petrucci discusses a recent case in which the facts were not disputed, only whether, based on the facts, the injured roofer was an employee or independent contractor. Christian writes: The facts of Hawbaker are fairly common, and nicely illustrate the proper analysis. The claimant was injured in November 2013,…
From Mondaq, Joseph A. McNelis III discusses the recent agreement between the Pennsylvania and United States Departments of Labor and what that means. Joseph writes: In an effort to combat the misclassification of certain workers as “independent contractors,” the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry (DLI) and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) signed a…
From JDSupra, Denise Elliott discusses a recent Pennsylvania court decision in which the court said that a worker is an independent contractor under the workers compensation statute only if the worker signed an independent contractor agreement before the worker sustained the injury. Denise writes: Recently, in Staron v. Workers’ Compensation Appeal Board (Farrier), the Commonwealth Court clarified…
From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette — “The IRS and the Department of Labor have tried to tighten up the rules about who can be classified an independent contractor and who is an employee, entitled to benefits. The latest definition from the DOL states that having a worker sign an agreement stating he or she is an independent contractor isn’t…
From Law360 — “A Pennsylvania state senator on Tuesday announced that he had introduced legislation that would enable local district attorneys to investigate and prosecute employers that improperly categorize construction employees as independent contractors. Sen. Mike Stack, D-Philadelphia, said that regulators from the state’s Department of Labor had fallen short in enforcing a 2011 law…
From Mondaq Employment and HR — ” The Plaintiffs were exotic dancers who filed a collective action against The Penthouse Club in Philadelphia alleging they were employees benefitted under the FLSA. As discussed in previous blogs, the court assesses the “totality of the circumstances” under the economic realities test to determine whether a worker is an independent…